Stock, Scope, and Crosshairs
by Niamh St. George
Summary: A series of sniper-related vignettes spanning all three games, tracking the friendship - and eventual relationship - between Garrus and Shepard.
1. Aim

The first time Garrus sees Shepard make a kill with a sniper rifle, he has to admit it's a pretty impressive sight.

Granted, she's entirely out of ammo and is using the weapon to bludgeon a rachni to death, but still — impressive. When it comes to shooting the thing, that's another matter entirely. It doesn't make a damned bit of sense to him; he knows enough about N7 selection — Shepard's been trained on every single weapon she carries, and that's not a _small_ number of weapons. Hell, the woman's practically a walking armory. So, she shouldn't be _bad_ with any of them, but she is — on that weapon, at least — to a point that leaves Garrus vaguely insulted on behalf of snipers everywhere.

He's just not sure it's the place — or time — to bring it up. Shepard's given him an out, has gotten him out from under all of C-Sec's red tape and bureaucracy and the never ending fill-this-out-in-triplicate of it all. When push comes to shove, he _really_ doesn't want to run the risk of being dumped right where he started from, all because he had the nerve to tell the first human Spectre that while she may have been top of the class when it came to hand-to-hand combat (true), and he's nearly sure he's never seen anyone, human, turian, or otherwise, handle a shotgun with that level of style (also true: she shoots, reloads, aims, and shoots again, all one after another in movements fluid as water), headshots only counted when they were _head_shots. That was the whole _point._ Line up your target and take them out in one pull of the trigger. Make every shot count — every _single_ shot. Because sometimes you only ever got _one_.

Sometimes one squeeze of the trigger is the thin line marking the difference between glory and death.

There's always the chance he's simply looking at her skill from a sniper's point of view, which he really can't help doing. His specialty, after all, and he's proud of it. But even so, she should be_ better_. He _wants_ her to be better. And he knows, deep in his gut, he knows she _can_ be better, that he can _make_ her better.

He just has to bring it up. Make her an offer in such a way that wouldn't end with his ass getting jettisoned next trip to the Citadel. Or worse, thrown out an airlock.

In the end, he doesn't have to say a damned word. Shepard finds him in the belly of the _Normandy_, tinkering with the Mako's defenses. For far too long she stands just off to the side, watching him work. But he's used to that, and he doesn't mind; Shepard is _curious,_ and when she's curious about something, she pays attention. Normally she stands behind him, watching over his shoulder, asking questions he's only too happy to answer. She likes to understand things, and doesn't make any pretense of already knowing all the answers. He finds it… refreshing. On this occasion, however, the commander doesn't seem particularly curious. Agitated, more like.

She coughs once, clears her throat, and says, "So, we've got a little down time coming up."

Garrus looks up from his work to find her standing too still, too tense, too ready to bolt. The readout on his visor is going wild, and he doesn't need to read her heat signature to notice there's a rush of color at her face already. He may not be able to _read_ her face, exactly, but those numbers are telling him _something_. He just doesn't know what.

_What kind of trouble are you going to get me into, Shepard?_ But he doesn't say that. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Shepard shifts her weight again, releases her hands, then reclasps her hands behind her back. Her body heat creeps up another half a degree. _Interesting, _he thinks. _Definitely interesting. _Then she rocks back on her heels and says, "Joker's taking her in for some maintenance."

"Hmm. Well, I'm not gonna complain; a little down time'll be nice." He turns back to the console then and waits, but the commander doesn't say anything else — and he's _sure_ there's more she's not saying. From the corner of his eye, he spies her still watching him, gnawing a little on her thumbnail. She shifts her weight again. After a moment he sends her a sidelong glance. "Something else on your mind, Commander?"

There. He's given her an opening. And when she frowns harder, maybe even annoyed with him for being perceptive — he's a _cop,_ his choices are to either be perceptive or _dead_ most days — Garrus finds himself almost surprised. Almost.

"You're a good shot, Vakarian."

He nods once. It's true, and he's not going to deny it. He's an _excellent_ shot. "All right. Tell me something I don't know."

"You're a cocky bastard?"

He cocks his head at her, wondering where she's taking this. It's not flattery — she's presenting the words far too matter-of-factly. "Knew that one, too."

She exhales hard, and there's a funny look in her eye. If Garrus didn't know better, he'd think she was trying not to laugh. "All right. You're the best sniper on the whole damned squad. Don't think I haven't figured that out."

"Oh, stop. You're gonna make me blush here, Shepard."

She goes on like he hadn't even spoken. "_And_ when I find someone who knows what they're doing, when I find the best, I'm not too proud to think I can't learn from them. So I've got a favor to ask. And _don't_ expect me to kiss your ass more than I already have."

He straightens again and leans against the Mako. "Here I thought _you_ were the one who always got asked the favors. Shoot."

"That's about it in a nutshell," she says with a shrug. She's more confident now, less fidgety, and Garrus wonders if Shepard simply hates _asking_ people for things. "You're good and I want to be better. I figure my best chance at _getting_ better is to pay attention to someone who's already good."

"Sound reasoning." He regards her a moment. This… isn't what he would've expected from working with a human — and that's not necessarily a bad thing. "So, what, you want some pointers?"

"Since we've got some free time coming up? Yeah, I guess you could say that."

He says yes.

Really, he's doing it for the good of the galaxy. At the rate Shepard is going, she's going to cause an intergalactic incident with that damned gun. Or put out her own eye.

#

Shepard has, of course, received standard training on a sniper rifle, and doesn't take long for Garrus to decide that's half the problem. She's received standard _human_ training on the sniper rifle. There isn't a turian training officer alive who'd let her off with those skills. Still, the raw talent _is_ there — that much is more than obvious; she just needs more practice. Better habits.

She also needs to _breathe._ He can see it, plain as day: Shepard, in a crouch, trying to line up the perfect shot, which would have been fine if she wasn't holding her breath. All that achieves — and he's known this since he was all of fifteen — is the scope wavering all over the damned place.

"Shepard," he sighs, "what in the hell are you doing?"

"Planting corn," she mutters, shooting him a dark sideways glare. "I'm _lining up the shot_. What's it look like I'm doing?"

Garrus shakes his head. "You really don't want me to answer that."

She lowers the gun and draws herself up to her full height — however much shorter Shepard is than Garrus, she more than makes up for those lost inches in the _look_ she gives him. "All right, smart guy. Tell me what I'm doing wrong."

"For a start? You aren't _breathing_, Shepard. Hell, I'm surprised you haven't passed out." He takes the gun from her hands, adding, "Tense snipers are dead snipers."

She makes a protesting little noise, folding her arms. "I'm not tense."

"The hell you're not. You're also impatient. That's no good either." He reloads the rifle and lowers himself into a crouch, lifting the gun up and settling it in place. The paper target hovers before him in the scope, blurry at first, then sliding swiftly into sharp focus. "You've got to breathe and wait," he says quietly, his words barely above a breath themselves. "Always ready, always primed for the _moment._" On his exhale, he squeezes the trigger. The gun kicks hard against his shoulder, filling the room with the sound of the shot. A small, neat hole decorates the target's head at the furthest end of the shooting range. "Granted," he says, standing and handing the rifle back to her, "it's easier when your target's standing still."

Shepard frowns and looks down the range at her targets; all of them have been _hit,_ of course, but every hole in every target lacks the same sort of _precision_. Garrus sees it, and he notices the moment Shepard sees it too. But it's her reaction that surprises him_._ Shepard _glowers._ Not at him or even at the gun, but at every imperfect shot.

Maybe there's hope for her yet.

"So all I've got to do is breathe?" she asks, never pulling her eyes from the row of targets.

"For now? Yeah. Breathe. Then we'll hit the tough stuff."

#

Weeks pass before Garrus sees Shepard use her sniper rifle in any sort of firefight again. In that time he's watched her play to her strengths and let her team play to theirs. In those weeks he's kept himself in position behind her, picking off the enemies she doesn't see coming as she charges into the fight, pushing the opposition back, clearing a path, fighting hard for every inch. He's never given much thought to shotguns before; they're effective enough, but crude and unsubtle. He's always believed there's no way could anyone get a _shotgun_ to dance_. _Or at least he'd thought so before now; as he watches Shepard through his scope, loading her gun with nimble fingers only to unleash a blast into whoever — or _what_ever — is stupid enough or suicidal enough to get in her way, as she simply absorbs the recoil and moves forward — always _forward,_ ever _forward. _She takes in things quickly, absorbs them, and makes decisions just as quickly. Quickly, but never recklessly — or _too_ recklessly, at least.

He realizes then that breathing and waiting and patience do not fit into who Shepard _is_ in the middle of a fight. Waiting would have meant her death a dozen times over by now — she moves fast and thinks faster, and it _works_ for her. She and Tali work well together; they both favor shotguns as they push through the warehouse of geth while he searches out the hidden threats and eliminates them.

Garrus takes out one last geth charging Shepard while she reloads, but when he turns his attention back her way, it's to find her facing his direction, her own sniper rifle raised, her eye to the scope.

_What the hell, Shepard?_ he wants to yell out, but there isn't enough time; the thought itself barely has time to form in his mind when he sees her chest lift as she breathes in, and then drop slightly as she exhales.

Her finger moves on the trigger. The room fills with the sound of that single shot.

The sound of metallic spluttering comes from somewhere behind and above Garrus, and with a torrent of sparks, the geth sniper that had been targeting _him_ tumbles over the railing and off the catwalk, landing in a pile of scrap. Its rifle spins and skitters across the floor. A single dark hole smokes up at them. A perfect headshot.

"Could've warned me," he says, staring down at the synthetic.

"No time," she replies, breathlessly. "Had to breathe."

"Nice shot."

"Thanks."

There are any number of other things he wants to say then, starting with "Hey, Shepard, thanks for keeping my brains from getting splattered" and ending with "No, really, _nice shot_." Why none of those things come out of his mouth, however, Garrus isn't all that_ sure_.

What he says instead is, "You know, everyone gets lucky sometime, Shepard."

"Are you kidding me?" she retorts, holstering the rifle and switching it out again for her shotgun. "That wasn't _luck_."

He's feeling cocky — or at least _really glad_ not to have gotten shot — because Shepard's standing right there, armed, and he still says, "Guess we're just going to have to see about that, won't we?" And, _yes,_ he is absolutely, _definitely_ challenging her now, because he _can._

Better still, _it works._ Shepard squares her shoulders and inclines her head, opens her mouth to say something (something _colorful,_ is his guess), but then snaps her mouth shut. Either she's actually insulted or just responding to his goading; better if it's the second and not the first — she still has the ability to make life pretty miserable. "Guess we're just going to have to start keeping track, then, won't we, Vakarian?"

_Definitely responding to the goading_, he thinks, pleased with himself. "You suggesting we keep score?"

"Maybe I am."

"Okay. Starting now?"

"Yeah. Starting now."

"All right. Starting now, that puts as at about…" Garrus thinks quickly, silently counting off each shot he'd taken. "What, ten to one? Twelve to one? Hey, I'm generous; let's say ten to one." He grins down at her. "Seems to me you've got some catching up to do, Shepard."

And then Shepard does the _strangest_ thing. She _smiles_ at him, then turns on her heel and walks out of the warehouse, leaving Tali and him behind. Tali sends him a look that says one hell of a lot for someone wearing a mask.

"Are you sure that was a smart thing to do, Garrus?"

He sighs and switches out his sniper rifle for his assault rifle, and starts off after Shepard. "Yeah… you know, I'm pretty sure it wasn't."

#

Mission by mission, Shepard changes her strategy subtly enough for Garrus to notice. Wrex comes along more often than Liara, if she happens to need a biotic, but with increasing frequency it's Tali and Garrus who accompany her off the _Normandy_. Instead of Garrus clearing things out while Shepard charges in, the two of them hang back together, picking off as many enemies as they can from a distance while Tali works her magic on the geth, before Shepard moves in to clear out the stragglers and push them forward. That's still her job and she knows it — push and fight and _push_ until they can get a foothold, and then push some more. That's still what happens, sure, it just happens a little differently.

Funny thing is, it works for them. A team of three is small under the best conditions, and the words "the best conditions" have not described a single one of their missions so far. They thin the herd from a safe distance — and when you're dealing with infestations of geth or rachni, or even those Cerberus bastards, thinning the herd isn't just necessary, it's _vital _— and then they advance. Shepard still changes things up now and then, trying different strategies, different squad members, and Garrus realizes it's not just about Shepard becoming a better sniper.

She's trying to become a better _leader_ as well.

Still, Garrus cringes every time she pulls out the sniper rifle without adequate cover — no time to line up the shot, no time for patience, and _definitely_ no time for a breath — but, with increasing frequency, Shepard makes the shot.

He keeps track of their respective kills on his visor, and feels a faint swell of pride as Shepard's headshot count slowly goes up.

But then time starts getting tight and things get tense. There isn't much opportunity for down time, so they take it where they can — refueling stops or maintenance checks are best. Garrus and Shepard either spend those spare hours at the C-Sec shooting range, down in the shuttle bay, or on other non-hostile planets, making up target-shooting games as they go along. Sometimes they flush vermin out of colony settlements, and sometimes they set up makeshift targets and goad each other until someone misses. Usually, it's Shepard. Sometimes it's not.

Slowly, Garrus finds himself correcting Shepard's form less and less. He never _lets_ her win these little contests, but neither does he go out of his way to beat her soundly enough to turn their competition into something less friendly. It's not what he ever expected, but there's a sort of camaraderie growing between them — respect and oneupmanship combined.

Maybe it's strange he'd form a friendship with a human, but that's the funny part — when they're hip deep in a firefight, he doesn't stop to think about the fact that Shepard's human — she's just Shepard_._

In fact, she stops being anything _but_ Shepard.

#

All of the waiting has come down to this.

The hunt has been drawing to an end for a while now — it looked like it was going to end on Virmire, but then everything went sideways, which only managed to piss Shepard off. She's hurt, too; he's read her files and he knows about Akuze, though he'd never in a lifetime _ask_ her about Akuze. But it doesn't take a genius to see there are ghosts pulling at her, judging her for her call. It was an impossible situation and time was running out — Garrus knows and understands the ugly truth of battle: not everyone comes out alive. He's not going to question Shepard's judgment, not on this (the rachni queen on Noveria, now _that's_ a different story; he's questioned that call since she made it — damn spiders).

The _Normandy_ is eerily quiet. Could be nerves, as they make their way to Ilos, or it could be the crew is feeling Kaidan's absence — maybe wondering who'll be next. Could even be some mix of the two. For a moment he misses turian ships — there's no room to _move_ on the _Normandy_, no battle sims, nowhere to run, to train, to spar. All there's room for is sitting and waiting, and normally he's pretty good at that, but right now he's wishing for a training room, or even a ring with an opponent to fight. It's been too long since he's done any real hand-to-hand, and Garrus considers whether the cargo hold would work — they could move the Mako off to the far side and clear up some space to move.

It takes no time at all to convince Wrex his plan's a good one — the krogan's looking at least as restless as Garrus feels.

"Go find Shepard," grunts Wrex. "I'll move the tank."

Absolutely nothing about Wrex inspires any sort of confidence in his driving abilities. And the Mako's tricky to handle at the best of times — Garrus knows; after a particularly dicey run-in with a thresher maw, Shepard willingly gave up all rights and privileges related to driving. "Don't you think we oughta move the tank _after_ I ask if we can do this?"

"_Ask_, nothin' — what're you thinkin' we're gonna ask her? I figured you'd _invite_ her. Give her the chance to wipe the floor with your bony ass."

"You know, having seen Shepard in action more than once, I'm pretty sure I'll pass."

He snorts a laugh. "Thought so."

"But I'd be happy to mention _you're_ interested in challenging her," he lobs back, stepping onto the elevator, letting it begin its upward climb before Wrex can reply.

It takes some time to find Shepard. She's in the cockpit, and initially Garrus thinks he's interrupted a conversation between her and Joker, but she's just standing there, looking out the window, arms folded across her body.

"You busy, Commander?"

"Just thinking."

Joker sends Shepard a skeptical look that makes it clear he's not terribly comfortable with anyone taking up so much of his space, but he doesn't comment. Garrus doesn't blame him one damn bit.

"About?"

"…Headshots."

He blinks once. "Come again?"

"Yeah, she's been a real barrel of laughs since she got up here," mutters Joker. Garrus and Shepard both ignore him.

"Headshots," she says again, and when she turns to look at him, there's a sort of… intensity in her eyes. Maybe she's being physically still, but mentally she's outrunning them all. "Every single race, every species we've come across so far can be taken down with a shot to the head. Even the geth. Headshots take them all out."

"True enough. What's your point?"

"Sovereign can get into heads — can infect the thoughts, the _motives_ of the people it infects."

"Which means we have to make more headshots."

"But we're never actually _taking out_ the head. We're taking out the puppets. The slaves. And Sovereign can _make more_ of those."

"Joker's right. You really are a barrel of laughs." He shakes his head. "You're gonna have to connect the dots for me here, Shepard. What, do we have to find Sovereign's head to take it out?"

She takes in a deep breath, lets it out again, and he's reminded of the day down in the C-Sec shooting range when he reminded her to breathe — he can almost imagine her picking her target, setting it up in the crosshairs.

"I just can't help but wonder…" Closing her eyes, she rubs hard at her forehead and he wonders for what's not the first time what the beacon showed her, what the cipher clarified for her. Oh, he knows the general bits; what he wonders is what she _saw._ This is not a woman easily rattled, and yet…

"Wonder what?" he asks, pulling her out of her thoughts — they can't be good ones. In fact, he's pretty sure they're not.

"If Sovereign _is_ the head or—"

"We'd have to take out the whole damn thing, in that case. Hell, we're gonna have to do that anyway."

"Or if there's something _else," _Shepard says, looking up at him_._ "Something _bigger._ A master switch, a main control — Sovereign didn't want to acknowledge it, but it's synthetic, meaning it had to be _built_ by someone. Some civilization, somewhere."

"Overload all of the Reapers in one shot? I like that idea."

"One great big headshot." She looks out the window again. "I keep hoping maybe there's something like that on Ilos. Maybe the Protheans… I don't know. Maybe we _are_ going to have to take them out, one by one."

"That could be fun too." He turns, and looks out the window with her. "Vakarian and Shepard, Lining 'em up, taking 'em out."

Shepard tries, but does a lousy job of hiding her laugh. "Vakarian and Shepard, huh?"

"Or Shepard and Vakarian," he replies with a shrug. "You know. Either way."

"Uh huh. We'd have to figure out where the heads are, first." She tips her head at him and grins. "Don't know how we'd keep score otherwise."

#

It's over. Been over for weeks — just over a month — and there's still nothing ahead of the Citadel but wreckage and rebuilding. Even being part of Shepard's squad is over for Garrus, and he's still not sure how he feels about that. At one time it seemed like a good idea — even Shepard had thought so. But now that he's _here_, now that he's back at C-Sec, back dealing with the same bureaucratic crap as before. He's telling himself it's better now, he's helping more people now, because there's so much to be recovered and rebuilt. But lately he feels like any sort of _good_ he's actively doing is getting lost somehow. It's not fulfilling in the way being on the _Normandy_ had been — but then what else _is_?

His shift is over and he's tired, hungry, and in a rotten mood. So when someone yells, "Hey, Vakarian!" his first instinct is to tell whoever it is to go straight to hell.

When he sees it's Shepard, leaning lazily against a wall still marred with bulletholes, he's glad he didn't listen to that first instinct. She looks tired too, but happy to see him as she pushes off from the wall and meets him halfway. She's carrying two bags, and _something_ smells delicious.

"What's that you've got there?" he asks, eyeing her bundles.

"It's food." She hands him one. "I figured you'd be hungry. Been a long shift."

"You figured right," he says, inhaling appreciatively. "Where'd you get this?"

"The turian with the food cart on Zakera Ward. Seemed like the right guy to go to for some dextro takeout. Turns out he's thinking about opening a cafe — I thought giving him a little extra business couldn't hurt."

He nods. The food's good; he's eaten there before, usually between shifts, and sometimes after work, when it's too late to even think about feeding himself. …It occurs to him then that he eats _a lot _of takeout. "So what've you got?"

She hefts her own bag, the plastic crinkling. "Ramen. Different guy, different cart."

"Right," he intones, peeking in his plastic bag, smiling a little at the choices Shepard's made for him. "The stuff that looks like worms. It was pretty popular with the krogan right up until they figured out the stuff only _looks_ like worms."

She shoots a crooked grin up at him. "Delicious, delicious worms."

"I had no idea you were such a fan of krogan cuisine, Shepard," he says on a dry chuckle, turning and leading the way to the shooting range. With everything else going on during the rebuild, it's little more than a still-unfinished room, but there are targets and there's room to shoot. All things considered, it's practically fancy compared to some of they places they've held their target practice.

"I wouldn't say that," she replies, falling into step beside him. He wonders how she does that, since one of his strides usually counts for two of hers. "But I did eat a worm on a dare once."

"A _worm_?" he asks, not bothering to hide his surprise. "Wait, let me guess. Wrex had something to do with it."

She laughs and shakes her head. "Nope, though I wouldn't put it past him, either. No, my brother Jason dared me to…" she trails off, and a strange look settles on her face, confusion mixed with realization. She looks up at him, blinking, and her steps slow to a stop. "Huh."

"I… didn't know you had a brother."

Shepard looks down at the floor briefly, but not before Garrus can see _something_ flash in those dark blue eyes. There's pain there. Loss. …Even tenderness. He waits quietly, letting her figure out what to say and when to say it. "I had two," she says, finally. Her voice is thick and she swallows hard. "And I just realized I've never told you about them until now. Never talked about them to… anyone."

The shooting range is deserted when they get there. They sit on the floor and eat — Garrus wonders how Shepard can eat something so slippery and unwieldy with a pair of _sticks_ — and she tells him, for the very first time, about her brothers. About her parents. About Mindoir. And once the food is eaten and the containers disposed of, they set up their guns and targets and begin to shoot. With her eye to the scope, Shepard talks; Garrus doesn't mind, because as long as she's talking, she's _breathing_. And in one night she tells him more than she's told him since the first day their paths crossed.

She doesn't tell him _everything_; he can tell by the way she furrows her brow and presses her lips together that there are still things she doesn't want to say, doesn't want to put into words. It doesn't bother him; everyone's got things like that. He thinks of his mother, of the most recent round of failed treatments, of the rage and helplessness at the injustice of a vibrant, intelligent woman slowly vanishing in bits and pieces. He thinks of her sharp mind going dull, of lucid moments growing fewer and further between, and of her anger and frustration _during_ those lucid moments. Against his will he thinks of recognition fading from sharp eyes that had always known just what kind of crap he was getting up to at any given second.

Maybe he'll tell Shepard about his mother someday, but not tonight. Tonight it's her turn.

She's felt like his friend for a while. Tonight, he starts to feel like _hers._


	2. Exhale

It's the end of a long shift and a long day; there's too much to do and not nearly enough C-Sec agents to do it all. Along with the usual problems — mercs and smugglers and petty crooks — there's a whole new breed of trouble coming in piggybacked on the Citadel rebuild efforts. Scam artists. Grifters. The type of scum that sees a disaster as an _opportunity_. Bastards, all of them. That day's gem: relocation and foster family services for the Citadel's orphans and transient children — the duct rats — which turned out to be a band of batarian pirates trying to break into the slave trade. The operative word being _trying._

So when Garrus hears there's a human woman waiting to see him in what's passing for a C-Sec interrogation room, he's pleasantly surprised. It's only been a few weeks since he saw Shepard last, since they stayed up all night at the shooting range, eating and talking and challenging and _goading_ each other until the morning shift showed up. He's not about to complain; he's _really_ in a mood to shoot something right now. And he's in a mood to let Shepard make it challenging. She pushes him like that, coming up with some of the most impossible shots, just to see if he can make them. And of course he _does,_ and then she takes notes and learns something from every impossible shot. Oh, he knows what she's doing — and her headshot score's been reflecting it, so he'll let her keep on doing it.

But when he walks into the small, windowless room, Garrus sees, not Shepard, but Ashley Williams sitting on the narrow metal bench. Gunnery Chief Williams. He's so surprised it's Ashley and not Shepard that Garrus forgets for a moment what he's even supposed to _call_ her. Ashley? Williams? Chief?

"Chief," he says, finally deciding and pushing aside his surprise, "didn't expect to find you here. How're things?"

Despite the chief's very… _definite_ opinions on aliens, they'd eventually reached a sort of truce while they were on the _Normandy_ together. They weren't the best of friends, but she accepted his loyalty to Shepard and to the mission, and that's always been good enough for Garrus.

It's _really_ strange she's here to see him, though.

Then she stands and Garrus notices several things all at once. First, Ashley's wearing civilian clothes. She also looks like reheated hell; her face is too pale and the shadows under her eyes are dark enough to be bruises — there's a long, deep scratch along her cheekbone, but it's not fresh. Her hands are clenched, pressed hard against her thighs as she stands. Her dark eyes look… haunted.

"Garrus…"

He hates the look in her eyes. Dread slams into his gut when he sees that look.

"What's happened?" he asks. There's no point in letting her work up to it; it's damned obvious _something_ happened, something _bad. _

"It's…" He gets another glimpse of that cold, bleak _pain_ in Williams' eyes before she looks down at the floor. And then she breathes in deeply, squares her shoulders, locks her hands behind her back, and inclines her head to meet his eyes. It's a mask she's wearing, and it's one he's seen before on Shepard's face. The mask of the good Alliance soldier, the mask Shepard wears when things are grim. The first time he recognized it for what it was, they were on Virmire.

Something's very wrong. Shit. _Shit._

"It's… the _Normandy,_" she says, and her voice sounds too tight and too hoarse and too _wrong, _and somehow Garrus knows it's not _just_ the _Normandy._ "Alliance brass is keeping the reports quiet. Admiral Anderson's cleared me to tell you—" A shudder wracks through her, and Garrus can see just how fast her heart is racing, but it only takes Ashley a moment to compose herself again. "The _Normandy's _gone, Garrus. We were patrolling the Alpha-Centauri system when she was attacked. It was… bad. Really bad." She swallows hard. "Commander ordered us to evac."

_Shepard's hurt_, he thinks. _Injured in the attack. In the crash, maybe_. It's getting harder and harder for him to focus on what Ashley's saying.

"…They're saying nothing's left of her."

"Where is she?" he asks.

"The wreckage is scattered all over Alchera."

He realizes suddenly he and the chief are talking about two very different things. "No, I meant… Shepard. What happened to her? Which hospital is she—"

Garrus' words trail into silence at the look on Ashley's face — the mask's been stripped away. She takes a deep breath, holding it a second or two and letting it out slowly before she speaks again. "She's gone, Garrus."

The word doesn't make sense. _Gone. _ "Gone" implies things that can't possibly be true. "Gone" makes him feel suddenly, sickeningly cold. "Gone" makes his hands clench into fists.

"What the _hell_ do you mean—"

"She went back for Joker," she breaks in, speaking slowly, letting every word sink in. "But she never made it onto his shuttle. A blast… knocked her back. Last thing she did was seal the door for him. There've been search and recovery teams, but no one's found her. She's just… gone."

He knows what she's not saying; the blast, the momentum of it… Garrus knows the word, of course. "Spaced." He's heard of men getting spaced before. He knows it's not the sort of thing anyone comes back from, even the great, larger-than-life, damn-near-immortal (not near enough, unfortunately) Commander Shepard. But Garrus can't make it apply in this case. The word sounds wrong in his head. Disrespectful. Shepard deserves better than that. Better than "gone." Better than "spaced." She deserves glory and victory and a _fight,_ dammit.

No. Not "deserves." _Deserved_.

He doesn't say anything for… spirits, he has no idea how long his silence lasts, but his mind is churning. Shepard, gone. Shepard, spaced. _Shepard._ It doesn't seem possible, but there are things even Shepard can't recover from. It's the truth, and he _hates_ that he knows it.

"The Alliance… they've… she's been declared dead."

They've given up on her. Declared her dead. Shepard, dead. He can't believe it. Can't process it. He wants to _hit_ something and suddenly he's _furious_. Furious with the Alliance because they're the easiest to blame. Furious with Joker for being too damned stubborn to leave the cockpit, for making Shepard go back for him. Furious at Shepard for going back for him at all.

_Of course_ Shepard went back for Joker. It's who she is.

_No. Not "is," _he corrects himself again._ Was. _

"…Why?" He doesn't even realize he's asked until the word's already out. _Why are you telling me? _

"You're kidding me," Ashley says with a— no, it's not a laugh. It's too harsh and broken-sounding to be laughter. She's holding it together, but barely. Whatever happened on that ship rattled Williams even worse than Virmire; he has no doubt she'll recover — she's a survivor — but for now she looks… beyond broken. "Skipper brought you everywhere," she goes on. "She trusted you. And you always had her back…" she pauses, and the composure she's been struggling with for so long wavers a moment before she adds, "never let her down."

He lets out a derisive snort and looks away. "Just not when it mattered."

"Garrus…"

The word comes out too short, too clipped, too _angry._ "_What?_"

"She'd've wanted you to know. She wouldn't want you getting stonewalled by the Alliance or hearing it on some news vid_. _She respected you too much for that."

The enormity of what has happened looms over Garrus, but can't quite seem to break through. Not yet. Shepard, dead. It seems impossible the woman he fought alongside, the one who knew the odds and still beat them, the one who _made time_ for missions others would have deemed low-priority, the one who talked a Mindoir survivor down from splattering blood and brains all over the docking bay could die _like that_. Just like that.

_Why her?_

He closes his eyes and pushes down his anger at the damned _injustice_ of it all — why _Shepard_, when there's already so much _scum_ all around? Why Shepard and not the thugs — the black-market slavers, the raiders, the con-artists, the weapons-dealers, or the drug-runners tracking red sand everywhere they go? What _good_ can possibly come from Shepard's death?

None, he decides.

"Thanks. For telling me," he finally grinds out. He's not particularly _thankful_ right now, but he wants this conversation over. He wants to be somewhere else, _anywhere_ else, and he turns to the door, even though he hasn't the first damned idea where he's going to _go._

Ashley nods once at nothing in particular, joining him at the door. "I'll… I'll be in touch," she says quietly. "There's… going to be a funeral."

Garrus can't make himself ask if the Alliance has managed to recover anything to bury — dog tags, a piece of armor — he's not sure he wants to know, anyway. He opens the door for them both, saying only, "I'll be there."

They shake hands, briefly, and she leaves. No one asks him about the visit, and he doesn't volunteer anything. Garrus' mind is overfull and rushing with thoughts and memories — being on the Citadel, surrounded by the lingering scars of their last fight together—

_Oh, come on. The lingering scars of battle? You are way too sober to be waxing this poetic, Vakarian, _he tells himself, sternly. But instead of returning to his apartment to fix this, he goes to the shooting range. He needs to feel the reassuring weight of his old Naginata in his hands — it's not the best gun in his collection, far from it, but it's in his locker, which makes it both nearby and familiar; right now, both of those are what he wants. He needs the ritual of cleaning the rifle afterwards. He needs _something_ that will calm him instead of numbing him. He doesn't _want_ numbness. Later, maybe. But not right now.

The range is empty and his footsteps echo loudly in the huge room. It's completely rebuilt now, walls and floors and targets — everything's new. Nothing like the last time Shepard had come by armed with food and a lazy grin—

Garrus shuts off the thought with a jerk and concentrates on the Naginata. With slow, precise movements, he takes it out of its case, cleans the scope, and begins assembling the gun, piece by piece, focusing on the weight of the rifle, the smooth barrel against his hands. He doesn't want to think about the last time — he doesn't even want to remember it as _the last time_ he saw Shepard, as if acknowledging that means acknowledging her death. He's not ready for anything as big as acknowledgement or acceptance yet. He's not even ready to _believe_ it. Shepard's too damn good, too smart, too crafty for anything like that to have happened. It's not that he doesn't want to believe it, he _can't_ believe it.

He's lost people before; he's even see men die before. People die — it's one of those unarguable facts of the universe. Maybe it's because he wasn't there, didn't witness it like Ash had, but that thought only brings the swift kick of responsibility — or _guilt_ — landing down hard on him, crashing into his gut as it weighs down his shoulders. _Who was watching her back?_ he can't help but wonder. _Who had her six?_

_No one, that's who._

His own damned fault he hadn't been there for her. That's his job — _was_ his job, anyway, until he left, determined to give C-Sec just one more try, thinking that maybe if he was there through the rebuilding, he could… _influence_ things, somehow. Seems foolish now. A stupid waste of time that would've been spent better on the _Normandy_.

_Should've been there. Should've been watching her back._

The headshot count glowing steadily on his visor will never change, now — and had it really been weeks ago they'd met up for target practice? It seems so much longer than that — longer, and yet hardly any time at all. Could've been yesterday. The memory of her is too vivid in his head and for a second he can almost smell the combined scent of their takeout. He'd seen how much she was improving. The gap between them was getting smaller, little by little, headshot by headshot. And then he'd walked back to the docking bay with her; she had to head back to the _Normandy_, and he had to get back to his apartment and get some damned sleep.

_"Getting better, Shepard."_

_"I thought you'd never notice."_

_"Still not good enough to beat me, but… well, no one's perfect."_

His last words to her — the last ones, ever. She went aboard the _Normandy_ and he went home and he _hadn't even said goodbye_.

The memory hits him too hard and he misjudges fitting the scope into place, sending the piece clattering down on the weapon bench. He picks up the scope before it rolls off the table entirely, his hand clenching hard around it. _Breathe, Vakarian. Just breathe._ No telling how long it takes, but his fingers are aching by the time he releases the scope, and his hands are trembling as he tries to attach it. It still takes three tries, but he gets it.

He spends the rest of the day in the shooting range, hating that nothing is far enough away to be challenging. Hating how many people have heard either news or rumors, despite the Alliance "keeping things quiet," and have come down to check on him. Not one of them knows what to say; not one of them knows there's nothing they _can_ say, that they're better off leaving him with his targets and his rifles and as much ammo as he can handle. He loses himself in the world through the scope, where nothing matters but what's right in front of him. Everything on the outskirts doesn't exist when he's looking through the scope — dead friends are still alive when he's looking through it. With a gentle squeeze of the trigger, he feels the Naginata's reassuring recoil; the target's now sporting a small, smoking hole.

_"Not bad, Vakarian. Not bad at all. Say, think you can send another round through the hole you just blew?"_

"Kid stuff," he mutters, just loud enough for his own ears, loud enough for the voice in his head. "Watch this." He aims for the hole, lets his finger rest feather-light against the trigger. He breathes in. As he squeezes the trigger, the scope wavers.

He misses the shot. But that's impossible; he never misses.

_"You didn't breathe, Vakarian."_

"Fuck you, Shepard," he mutters. And maybe there's a line somewhere he just crossed, because he's in an empty shooting range not only talking to his dead friend, but picking a fight with her. It's a new low any way you slice it.

_"Come on. You're just gonna sit down here and blow holes into things till you rot?"_

He reloads and shoots again, hoping the noise will drown out the voice he doesn't want to hear, saying the words he's not _ready_ to hear. "Maybe."

_"Not doing much good down here. Less if you _do_ rot."_

It hits him it's gonna take a lot more noise to drown Shepard out. "Yeah, well, neither are you," he spits, not caring if every hole he's blowing in every target is a careless shot. He can't make himself care about precision, just the shot, the recoil, and the reload — the reassuring mechanics of the gun.

_"I'm dead. What's your excuse?"_

The rifle hisses suddenly — damned thing overheated again, and the urge to throw the gun is temptingly overwhelming. He sets it down too hard on the weapon bench instead. "You're goddamn insufferable, you know that?"

_"I'm also a goddamn voice in your head. So what are you gonna do about it?"_

It's a good question, he decides. One worth answering.

#

Omega.

Garrus has been here less than a month, and there's only one damned thing he's certain of about Omega. Well, two things. First: when he'd thought C-Sec had prepared him for somewhere even remotely like Omega, he'd been dead wrong. It's almost laughable how _wrong_ he'd been.

Second: he _really_ hates it here. In a backwards sort of way, his hate for the place is what keeps him sticking around.

Over time, he realizes he's not the only one who feels that way. There are others — all of them of different. Different species, different circumstances, but not so different motivations — it seems everyone on Omega's lost someone _to _Omega. There are reformed mercs (is there really such a thing? Garrus isn't sure) and disillusioned military men, but there are also men with families who just want to make Omega safer for their children; there are loners who have some unvoiced score to settle with the station (which seems to breathe with a corrupt life of its own); there are misfits, lost and looking for some place they _fit; _there are quiet, private men, and there are some who are anything but. When they figure out that _he's_ the one who's been screwing with Omega's gangs, they come to him — they want to join him — and it _surprises_ Garrus. Surprises him and leaves him a little unnerved — this isn't who he is. He's not a leader of men; he's one pissed-off turian with a gun, a whole lot of rage, and a deep need for some convenient targets. He wants to do something good in a place where good things _don't happen._ And he sure as hell doesn't want a team; he wants to be left alone so he can make a temporary dent in Omega until something puts a permanent dent in him. It's grim, sure, but optimism feels too far away right now, and he doubts that'll ever change.

But they keep coming to him. Like strays. They come to him and he gets tired of sending them away — they always come back anyway — so they stay. They stay and they listen to him; he makes the plans and his team carries them out, and he tries, he tries _so hard_ not to think after even a few weeks in that this must have been how Shepard felt, especially once things start happening, once they start getting noticed.

That attention sets off an alarm somewhere in the back of Garrus' head. Once a sniper's been noticed, once he's spotted and identified, he's as good as dead. But he doesn't take off any of the pressure they're putting on the merc gangs; he doesn't see the point — anyone wants to take out this group, they'll go for the head first — take off the head and the body dies. The headshot score still glowing steadily in his visor, the one that still hasn't changed and never will, reminds him of that every damned day.

Months pass before he realizes it. His team works well together and he trusts them. They trust him. Somewhere along the line, he became a leader — still not really sure how that happened. Maybe because he's taken a page or twelve out of Shepard's book. Eventually someone starts calling him "Archangel," and it sticks. The name makes him a little uncomfortable, but the greater distance it puts between who he was and who he's become, the better.

Sometimes he wonders, as he peers through his scope, perched high on some building, catwalk, or some random second-story window, whether Omega's always been about Shepard, about keeping her memory alive. If he was just fooling himself when he walked away from C-Sec, when he told himself he was sick of fighting politicians _and_ criminals, and how many times they were one in the same. Nothing good came from Shepard's death, and he came to Omega to do some good. Being on Omega, fighting on his _own_ terms… it feels _right._ It feels _right_ to have the odds stacked against him, to have to navigate his way through a shitstorm without worrying about someone chewing him out over how many regs he broke to get the job done.

He just wants to get the damned job _done. _Like the old days.

Then it happens, and it's nothing like the _old days_ at all. It happens suddenly, takes him by surprise and, _dammit,_ he hates surprises. Hates that he didn't see it coming — _he should've seen it coming._ Goddamn _Sidonis_.

Just like he _should've_ had Shepard's six, should've _been there_ to reach out and grab her damned armor and pull her back into the escape shuttle instead of wasting his time and energy at damned C-Sec. He should've _known_ Sidonis was going to betray them. He should've known, and now good men are dead because he hadn't seen it coming. He was so focused on the danger in front of him that he didn't see what the hell was going on right behind him. Right in the sniper's blind spot.

Shepard would've known, would've seen it coming, would've dealt with Sidonis _before_ things went sideways. Before good men were killed and before he had to tell every one of their families — the ones who had families — what had happened. What he'd _let_ happen.

Shepard never would've let this happen. And that only tells Garrus what he's known for a long time now: He's no Shepard. He's not meant to lead. He wasn't born for it, not like she'd been.

But there are still things he _is_ good at, and righting wrongs is one of them.

#

When Garrus thinks about it, it's kind of flattering, really.

Omega's gangs hate him enough to _join forces? _Really? He figures they must go in for that "enemy of my enemy" crap, or at least they will until they've taken him down. Maybe they figure if they put their heads together, they'll outsmart him. That part's unlikely, since their strategy — if it can be called that — involves funneling a lot of idiot freelancers into a perfect killbox. A killbox _he _constructed. The only thing he can come up with is that the merc bosses hope he'll run out of ammo before they run out of fodder.

He's not too sure about that. He's got _a lot_ of ammo. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be using it to kill too many of the _actual_ gang members — just freelancers with more ego than sense. Every now and then he gets off a well-timed shot as a Blue Sun hurries off to the Blood Pack camp, or an Eclipse scout heads to the vending machines for food — he drops another one who's doing just that, and Garrus wonders if it's possible to starve the bastards out. Or at least until the Vorcha get hungry enough. Once that happens… well, things'll start to get even more interesting, he's pretty sure.

The crumpled form now lying in front of the blood-spattered vending machine prompts Garrus to take inventory of his own remaining supplies. Plenty of ammo — still — and plenty of dextro rations and nutrient paste, for when supplies get lean (he's not looking forward to reaching that part of the menu; the rations already taste enough like paste — there aren't words for how bad the actual paste tastes). What he doesn't have much of anymore are stims, and it looks like that's going to be the problem. There are enough mercs to take shifts; Garrus has only himself, and he knows when the stims run out, his body is going to crash, and crash hard. He's got a fair idea what's going to happen after that, but for now he has enough supplies to get by. Depending on how many of the bastards he can take out between now and whenever the food and stims run out, it might even be enough.

It takes two weeks of carefully-dosed stims before Garrus realizes his time has been whittled down to… days, if he's feeling optimistic, and hours if he's not.

Garrus hasn't felt optimistic in a _very_ long time.

He lasts as long as he dares before he jolts himself back to alertness, until every hour he's awake feels like three, until no amount of adjusting will fix the blurriness in his scope. Sometimes he misses shots. Sometimes he clips a merc on the shoulder, barely making his shields waver. Sometimes he misses outright. He hates when he misses; it's wasted ammo and wasted seconds he'll never get back.

The mood's starting to shift. They haven't run out of freelancers and amateurs to throw his way, but he knows they're watching him, watching and noting every mistake he makes — because he's definitely making more mistakes now. The air everywhere on Omega stinks, but now it's thick with the gangs' anticipation as well. They'rewaiting for him to give them their in, waiting for him to screw up. Eyes are trained on the back of his head and hot, hungry breaths are panting down his neck, and a small part of him is _looking forward_ to it, because all of this crap will be over, then, and he'll know he took out as many of the bastards as he could.

Another stim charges through his system, shaking awake every flagging nerve like the most tenacious drill-sergeant, and Garrus blinks hard, his vision sharpening and clearing. This is when he's at his best, when his exhaustion gets crushed by the wave of stimulants, and every reflex he has is honed razor-sharp. He crouches down and lifts his rifle, bringing his eye to the scope… and nearly drops the damned gun altogether.

Shepard. He saw Shepard.

No, he _sees_ Shepard_._

A million thoughts hurtle through his head, and with the edge given them by the stims, they race almost faster than he can keep up. The first coherent realization that separates itself from the buzzing swarm is that he has pushed himself too damned far if he's seeing ghosts. His next is that he's probably just imagined it, or that the woman in his sights just _resembles_ Shepard. But to prove either of those theories true, he's got to look through the scope again. Garrus hesitates, not sure if it's because he's afraid he will see her, or because he's afraid he _won't._ He's not sure which is worse.

A few breaths later, he peers through the scope again, steeling himself for every likely possibility. He stares hard at the woman — her inky hair is cut in the same short-enough-to-stay-out-of-her-face style he remembers. She frowns darkly and tugs at it — a gesture he's seen too many times to count; the familiarity of it makes his stomach clench hard, even as he knows exactly what it means. It means, he's almost positive, _Give me one damned good reason not to start shooting now._ The woman — he cannot make himself call her Shepard, can't even let himself think of her as Shepard — speaks to a heavily armed, heavily scarred man to her right, and nods at something her other companion — a taller woman in skintight white — and then she turns and looks up at _him, _narrowing her eyes. They're blue — a deep, impossible blue, wide-set in a face he didn't think he'd ever see again. The scar across her right eyebrow is missing, and there are new scars across her cheek, but it's Shepard's face, making the sort of face Shepard would make.

He looks again at her eyes, at her _expression_, and he's sure. It's Shepard, all right, and the realization startles him enough that his finger twitches on the trigger, sending off a wild, badly aimed shot that ricochets off her shields.

And then he realizes he's been holding his breath.

_Don't forget to breathe, Vakarian, _a far-off voice (and Garrus is damned if he knows who that voice sounds like anymore) in his head reminds him. He breathes, gives himself a shake, and turns himself to his work again. He can still see her, but he doesn't want to _look. _And he sure as hell doesn't want to think about what it means for him if he's seeing her _now. _Shepard — the Shepard he knew, anyway — wouldn't join up with merc gangs.

He wonders for a moment what they've been saying about Archangel. If they've made him out to sound _worse_ than the mercs. That's a cause she'd take up. Even if it meant a temporary alliance with gangs.

Then the next wave of fodder — the group Shepard's with, provided that _really is_ Shepard — is on the move. He takes out one of them, then two, and then Garrus' scope finds her again, and what he sees changes _everything._

He sees Shepard's sudden, fierce grin, right before she unleashes a shotgun round, then another, into the wannabe merc running just ahead of her. The merc falls with a scream even Garrus can hear. Rather than wasting time reloading, she holsters the shotgun and, with a fluid grace he hasn't seen in years, but recognizes nonetheless, pulls out her assault rifle and pushes through anyone stupid enough to get in her way. It's a move that's so undeniably Shepard, and that is enough to convince him, to erase all doubt.

And, hey, if she's come to help him, the least he can do is make it a little easier for her. He reloads, and with something feeling surprisingly like optimism — peppered with a little bit of _Well, maybe I'll get out of this alive after all_ — Garrus aims, breathes, and shoots.

#

They're working together again. Fighting together again. Things are… different now, though. There's less of an obvious chain of command between them — they feel more like colleagues than before. This is still Shepard's mission, still Shepard's show; that hasn't changed. She still gets to know all of her crew, just like before — even suckers Daniels and Donnelly, down in engineering, into a game of Skyllian Five. But just when he thinks nothing about Shepard has changed (and even those scars she had that first day in Omega are gone; she even _looks_ more like herself than ever) he sees it. It's just a glimpse, nothing more than a flash, really, and easy enough to miss if you aren't paying attention. He sees it that day when he comes out of the battery to find her sitting in the mess, reading from a datapad, a cup of still-untouched coffee in front of her. He sees it when she doesn't have the mission to concentrate on, when she doesn't have the crew to distract her. Garrus wonders what it is, that flash of _something._ He wonders what makes her hesitate during those quieter moments, when she sure as hell hasn't been hesitating in any fight they've fought together.

He stands there a moment, considering. Turians aren't… _good_ at this sort of thing — at asking personal questions, getting equally as personal answers in response. His people are not philosophers or poets; turian music is filled with anthems, turian literature with military speeches meant to rouse and inspire. There is something wrong with Shepard, and whatever it is, Garrus is sure it won't be fixed by a pep-talk.

After deliberating a second or two, he slides into the seat across from Shepard, and when she doesn't look up, he's all but certain she's not reading a damned word on that pad.

Looking down at her cup, he tips his head and, clearing his throat, says, "There, ah, seems to be something wrong with your coffee, Shepard."

The words are enough to jolt her out of whatever fog she's fallen into, and she blinks at him once, then twice, her brow furrowing as she tries to figure out how long he's been sitting there. "Sorry. What?"

He nods at her coffee. There looks to be some sort of… coating over the liquid, like a sort of… congealed fungus that looks a little too sludgelike for his tastes. Not that he'd drink it anyway, but even if he _could,_ he probably wouldn't. "Your coffee. Something's wrong with it."

She looks down, breathes a laugh and shakes her head, then picks up a spoon and stirs — whatever it is that's on the top isn't dissolving, or if it is, it's not doing it very _well._ "It's just cinnamon, Garrus. Human spice — levo stuff. It…" she looks down as she stirs and shakes her head, still looking amused, "doesn't really dissolve all that well. But it's good stuff." She takes a long drink, punctuating the statement, then closes her eyes and _savors_ the taste a second or two before adding, "Really good stuff."

"That's a relief, 'cause it looked like it was on its way to developing sentience."

Her grin turns a little sheepish, which is still better than the distracted, troubled look she was wearing only moments before. "I may have gone kind of heavy on it," she says with a shrug. "I got kind of excited Gardner had any to begin with."

"You like this stuff?" He leans over, sniffing curiously; the smell that comes back to him isn't unpleasant in the least. Even reminds him of something, but the memory's too far away for him to grab just then.

"Yeah. It's not… sweet, like sugar. It's got a little kick to it. Little bit of heat."

_So it's a little bit like you,_ he thinks, and the thought takes him completely by surprise.

"So…" Shepard pushes the datapad aside and rests her elbow on the table, propping her chin lightly in her palm. "What's on your mind, Garrus?"

That's not a question he wants to answer right now. In fact, he doesn't want to talk about himself right now at all. There's… a lot on his mind lately, but nothing he's ready to share just yet. He does have a favor brewing, and it's a big one, but he needs more information. There are still a few contacts he's waiting to hear from, so for now, he keeps his info to himself. Instead, he leans back in his chair and tips his head at Shepard, sending her a cool, level look. She takes it for maybe three seconds before she arches an eyebrow at him.

"You look like the cat that ate the canary. Spill it, Vakarian."

"The what that ate the— wait, let me guess, another human saying?"

"Yeah," she says with a nod, taking a long drink from the cup. "It means you look really pleased with yourself. Now spill."

"It's occurring to me, Shepard," he says on a drawl, letting the words linger just long enough to catch her attention, "that you haven't let me school you lately."

"_School_ me?" she echoes with a laugh. "Oh, that's rich. Now, I'll be the first to admit you gave me some _pointers…_"

He taps his visor where the headshot count still glows steadily. "Numbers don't lie." And at her look, Garrus realizes he's never told her he'd ever stopped keeping score. "It _was_ your idea," he adds.

She blinks, stunned, like she's still trying to make sense of what he's saying. "I remember. I just… you're saying you've kept it—"

"…Yeah."

"How…" Shepard stops, swallows, tries again. "How long have you been— how long has it been… there?"

"Every damn day, Shepard." He doesn't know how to explain it to her, _why_ he let those numbers hover just on the edge of his vision. He's not even completely sure himself. "The, ah, score's current, just so you know. I decided to give you the kill shot for the thresher maw, even though you weren't technically using a rifle at the time. That thing's got a hell of a big head, so I figured you should get a pass for the particle beam. A headshot's a headshot."

That almost makes her laugh. He feels a little better. "Mighty generous of you, Garrus."

"Generosity's my middle name."

"Yeah?"

"Not really, but I'm sure as hell not telling you what is," he says easily. Shepard's smile lasts a moment longer, then fades as her eyes go to his visor, as if she can see the numbers, stats, and readouts hovering in his line of sight. "So… thresher maw and… recent missions aside," Garrus says, stopping to cough and clear his throat, "the last time that score changed was—"

"C-Sec shooting range," she supplies, distantly. "Before Alpha Centauri."

He nods. Before Alpha Centauri. It was a hell of a lot easier than saying, _Before you died._ "Yeah. You brought takeout."

"I did. That turian's got his cafe now, I saw."

"So does the ramen guy."

"Worms," she chuckles, looking down and shaking her head. "Yeah. I remember it, Garrus."

"Oh, good." He doesn't want to kick up more than he has already, so he lets out a little cough and says, in a tone he _knows_ she'll never be able to resist or ignore, "So if you remember that, you'll also recall I kicked your ass."

When she looks up, her eyes are narrowed in a challenge, but there's no hint of whatever had been troubling her earlier. It's definitely an improvement. "I recall no such thing, Vakarian," she says, her tone deceptively light.

"Well." He leans further back in his chair and crosses his arms across his chest. "Looks like we're gonna have to wait until our next stop at the Citadel to see—"

"Screw that," she replies, sliding away from the table and pushing to her feet. "Shuttle bay, ten minutes. Get your gun. We've got a Cerberus hardsuit that needs some holes in it."

He leans back in his chair and grins, watching as she strides off toward the elevator. "Right behind you, Shepard."

_Right behind you._

#

She isn't moving. She isn't letting him take the shot.

_Move, Shepard. _

His frustration and anger are ratcheting higher and higher and _why won't she just move already?_ And then Sidonis, slippery traitorous bastard that he is, turns to walk away and for a second — less than a second — Garrus can see him, but even before the scope slides into focus, Shepard's darted between them again. She's _talking_ to him and _damn it_ he doesn't want _talking_ right now. Garrus wants a score settled. He wants justice for ten good men, ten men whose only mistake was trusting in him. He doesn't want to hear what Sidonis has to say for himself — he doesn't _care._

And still Shepard won't move — _why won't she move?_

Part of him wonders if she never intended to let him take the shot at all, or if this is just Shepard's insane way of improvising. He growls at her through the radio, but she ignores him, keeps _talking_ to Sidonis. He's so angry at the injustice of it all that he can barely hear her over the drumming of his own heart, pounding in his ears.

But then, through the pounding, through his anger, he hears Sidonis' voice, the voice of a man he'd considered an ally, the voice of a man he'd trusted. And though all he can see is the back of Shepard's head, black hair shining almost blue under the harsh Citadel lighting, he can hear the misery in Sidonis' voice. He can hear it, and it pisses him off beyond reason that Sidonis should feel this way about the men he betrayed. No, Sidonis was supposed to have been content, even smug for having gotten away with murder.

_Food has no taste._

_Their faces… accusing me._

Those words could have been Garrus' own; he knows it and he hates it. He has more than just the memory of his men as a reminder — their names are with him, _always_ with him, ten weights carved into his visor. But Sidonis… there's nothing left of him but a man forced to live every day with the mistakes he's made. Maybe killing him would have been a favor, but even that thought doesn't make Garrus feel any better. He wanted _satisfaction_ out of this. He wanted justice for his men, sure, but the satisfaction was going to be all his.

Garrus looks again at the back of Shepard's head, and finally, suddenly, _gets_ it. He doesn't like it, but he gets it.

_Damn it._

He's holding his breath — has been for a while — and when he lets it all out, his fingers go slack. It's not worth it. In his ear, he can hear Shepard saying the same thing. He wants to be angry with her for denying him this, but mostly he's just… tired. It's so much easier looking at life through a sniper's scope, too far away to hear, too far away to give a damn. There's just the scope and the crosshairs. Justice and injustice. Black and white.

"Just… just tell him to go."

There's too damned much grey in the world, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

#

Garrus likes having a plan. They're reassuring — the knowledge that there's a course of action to be taken, even if that course is simply "Let's blow the Collectors out of the sky" or "Find a big gun, then improvise." Granted, those aren't the most _detailed_ plans, but details can always be figured out later.

So when he tells Shepard he needs time to research, what he actually means is that he needs time — time to research, time to conceive a damn plan, because even without taking the complications involved with this whole inter-species… _thing_ into consideration, romance is not Garrus Vakarian's strong suit. Never has been. And no matter what he tries to tell himself, there's a lot more on the line than just _blowing off steam._ He's not quite sure when or how it happened; Shepard's his friend — he wasn't kidding when he told her there was no one in the galaxy he respects more — but somewhere along the line, she turned into _more_. She became… important to him beyond respect and admiration and camaraderie. Try as he might, it's damn near impossible to pinpoint the moment when things changed for him. Before he told her about that recon scout, that's for sure, and what in all the universe possessed him to tell her _that_ story, Garrus doesn't have the least idea.

He just knows he doesn't want to screw this up now that it looks like it's going to happen.

So Garrus starts his research, and it's kind of like trying to calibrate the galaxy's biggest, most complicated weapon: one wrong algorithm and the whole damned thing could blow up in his face.

The memory of the meal they shared together before Alpha Centauri stays with Garrus — has stayed with him, even on Omega, maybe even _especially_ on Omega. But where once the memory of their easy camaraderie mocked him, even caused him pain, right now the memory helps him lay the groundwork for a plan. A nice meal together might be a good way to start… whatever the hell this is they're trying to do (and he's still not sure about that; this whole thing feels like an enormous gamble). The good news is Gardner's a fan of Shepard and is eager to help — all the better, he seems to know his way around dextro ingredients. Gardner agrees to come up with a private, portable dinner for the two of them, and Garrus will bring it up to Shepard's cabin, along with a bottle of dual-chiral wine he'd bought on Illium on their last trip there. It's a plan, and as far as things went, a good one. Even looking into interspecies intercourse (still sounds dirty and clinical to him, but those are the search terms that bring back the most… useful extranet results), and leaves him almost surprisingly optimistic.

And then the Collectors came along and abducted the whole goddamn crew.

After that, the only plan that mattered was "Get through the Omega-4 Relay and get back the crew." There wasn't room for anything else. And if Garrus finds himself annoyed by anything, it's with himself for _waiting._ He hadn't wanted to rush things, wanted to wait for the right moment, didn't want to disrupt the crew — and he was used to being patient. He's never minded waiting for a target to line up perfectly in the crosshairs.

And that had been the problem — he'd spent too much time watching the scope and waiting for the right angle. Even after Gardner told him a number of times that he had all the supplies he needed, it was just up to Garrus to say the word, he'd _still waited._ And now he realizes he's waited too long. Now there are more important things to worry about. Times like these, priorities get shifted. Plans get jettisoned.

And there's always the chance Shepard's own priorities are shifting — have shifted. Her own plans getting jettisoned.

His omni-tool beeps softly with an incoming message. It's from Shepard.

_Come on up._

Two hours from the Omega-4 Relay. Two hours from victory or death. Shepard knows a thing or two about plans. They change. And maybe this isn't exactly how she planned things, either.

He looks again at the omni-tool.

_Come on up._

"Officer Vakarian." EDI's smooth voice fills the battery, the hum of the engines only serving to make the metallic edge to her voice more resonant.

"Yeah, EDI?"

"Commander Shepard has expressed concern that the _Normandy's_ recent IFF upgrade may have negatively affected on-ship communications. I have assured her this is not the case and that all functions are working properly." There's the faintest undertone of… _something_ in the AI's voice that could be amused exasperation.

"Is that so?" he asks, looking over at the bottle of wine.

"Indeed. However, the commander remains… unconvinced, and expressed a desire that I make certain you received her message."

His soft laugh takes him half by surprise. "Yeah. Yeah, EDI. I got her message. Loud and clear."

"Excellent. I will notify Commander Shepard." A pause, and damned if it doesn't sound like a _thoughtful_ pause. "And Officer Vakarian?"

"Hmm?"

"Good luck."

His silence is just long enough, apparently, to prompt EDIT into an explanation. "Your extranet searches have been quite… telling, Garrus."

That's enough to make him rub hard at his browplates. If EDI had been paying attention to his research attempts — and the nuances of discretion tend to be lost on the AI — the implications were enough to give him a headache. If EDI knew something was up, who the hell else knew now? "I, ah… I see."

"If wishing you luck was inappropriate—"

"No. No, it's… fine. Hell, I'm going to need all the luck I can get right now. Something's got to go right sometime, right?"

"Probabilities suggest—"

"It was just a figure of speech, EDI."

He's already grabbed the bottle and is headed for the door. Maybe it's a gamble, maybe it's a mistake, and maybe their friendship won't recover from what he's about to do next. …But then again, maybe it _will._

_Something's gotta go right._

#

Looking death in the eye and then spitting at it — and getting away to tell the tale — is definitely a reason to celebrate. Kasumi's quarters in the observatory have been deemed celebration central — makes sense to Garrus: she's the one with the bar in her room.

Daniels, Donnelly, Tali, and Jacob are camped on Kasumi's bed, playing cards, Doc Chakwas perched on a chair nearby watching over them all as she sips her brandy; she could be watching the game for fun, or she could be looking for tells now with the intent to join the game later. Either's possible, really. Kasumi's making the rounds, but she hovers near the poker game more often than anywhere else. The thief's movements are hard to track at the best of times, but Garrus is nearly certain he saw her slip Jacob a card more than once. Good luck trying that crap against Tali, he thinks — she's less dangerous than Shepard around a card table, but not by much.

Zaeed is regaling Grunt and Jack with tales of missions past — Grunt is fascinated and Jack is incredulous, and every time Jack heckles Zaeed — "That's fucking bullshit, old man" — Grunt snorts and grumbles and glares at Jack, not too unlike a kid annoyed at having his favorite bedtime story interrupted. And that might not be too far from the truth.

It seems everyone's crammed into Kasumi's quarters — Miranda and Samara are standing by the window looking out at the stars, both with glasses of wine in hand. Kelly Chambers is in deep conversation with Thane, and when Kasumi glides over to Chambers and whispers something in her ear, and _both_ women turn to grin knowingly at _him, _beating a hasty retreat seems like the best idea. It's not because Shepard's nowhere to be seen at this little party. Definitely not. Oh, she made an appearance early on, but excused herself not much later — mission files she wanted to review for something going on down on Arahtot.

When the noise of the party grows duller as the door closes, Garrus makes his way to the elevator, saying, "EDI, what's Commander Shepard's location?" He expects she's in her quarters, poring over any files Hackett's forwarded her for the Arahtot mission.

So when EDI replies, "Commander Shepard is currently in the cockpit," it comes as a surprise — though a pleasant one. If she's in the cockpit, the chances she's doing actual work are slim.

The CIC is quiet as he strides though, but it's a relieved quiet, not a tense one — or the kind of quiet that comes from the entire damned crew being kidnapped — which is a nice change of pace. Shepard is in the co-pilot's seat, a mug of coffee in her hands, her head tipped back, watching the stars go by. She doesn't watch the stars so much anymore, and he can't blame her for that. But right now she looks peaceful, like there's a chance she might find solitude in the sight of the stars again someday.

Garrus clears his throat and takes a few steps into the cockpit. "Don't tell me you're teaching Shepard to fly this thing, Joker. I've seen the way she handles the Hammerhead."

"Yeah?" the pilot replies. "Is it any better than the way you handled the Mako?" Shepard smirks into her coffee cup.

"Telling tales, are we, Shepard?" Garrus asks, crossing his arms as he leans against her seat, making it swivel slightly.

"More like a comparative analysis," she replies, looking up at him.

"And to answer your first question, Garrus? Hell no," Joker says, swinging his seat around. "No one flies this girl but me."

EDI's voice fills the cockpit, and for once no one jumps. Shepard's looking at the stars, and they're getting used to an AI contributing to the conversation. Strange days, indeed. "I am certain Commander Shepard would prove an adequate pupil under my tutelage, Jeff."

"See?" Shepard says. "EDI thinks I could do it."

"Don't help, EDI." Joker shakes his head and swings back around to face the controls. "Not gonna happen, Commander."

"Not until you take out the Hammerhead and bring it back without a scratch. Or scorch marks," Garrus adds, remembering Vulcan Station. Shepard remembers too, and groans.

"Yeah," mutters Joker. "No _way_ you're flying this ship."

"Not without pulling rank, at least," Shepard says, pushing herself out of the chair. "Something you needed, Garrus?" and though the question is innocent enough, the way she slides her hand into his is anything _but_ and it's a damn marvel that something as simple as _holding hands_ could make his pulse kick up.

"You left the party," he says, giving her hand a squeeze, then releasing it. "Just wondering why."

She nods once and starts for the elevator, which doesn't exactly make him feel better. Once they're alone and on their way up to Shepard's cabin, she looks down into her cup and tosses the last of the coffee back before meeting his gaze. "We still didn't take out the head."

The thought's occurred to him, too — the Collectors, when you got right down to it, weren't that different from Saren. They worked for the Reapers, were controlled _by_ the Reapers, but they _weren't_ the Reapers. "More puppets," is all he says.

"I'm tired of dealing with puppets, Garrus."

The doors open and they make their way into Shepard's cabin, lit by the gentle aquarium lighting. She touches a pad on the wall and the lights go up a little. "We're not doing a damned thing but reacting to whatever the hell the Reapers throw at us. Saren. The Collectors. All it's doing us is buying us time."

"And buying time doesn't do a damned bit of good if the people in charge don't do anything with that time."

"Exactly," she says, dropping onto the couch. "Nothing I've said to anyone makes a difference. Not to the Council, not to the Alliance — on my best days, they just think I'm a little crazy. On my worst, downright delusional."

"Well." He sits next to her. "You are a _little_ crazy, Shepard. But in the good sort of way."

The silence that follows is companionable, as Shepard leans against him, her warmth soaking through his clothes. It only takes the slightest encouragement before she shifts and slides onto his lap, resting her head against his shoulder. Funny, there was a time not too long ago when he'd wondered how the hell two bodies shaped so differently could fit together at all. Now he can't imagine anything else.

"I just know it's going to get worse before it gets better, Garrus."

"That part goes without saying," he says on a sigh, leaning back against the couch, his body taking most of her weight. "And sometimes the only strategy you've got is the one you make up on the fly. You've gotta be flexible." With a little nudge, he adds, "And you _do_ know a thing or two about flexibility, Shepard." His reward is a soft snort of laughter and a light punch at his chest. "Innuendo notwithstanding, you know I'm right."

"Yeah. You don't have to rub it in, though."

"Part of my charm. You know. On top of the scars."

They stay like that for a while, listening to the fishtank's soft gurgle and the engine-hum that surrounds them — in fact, just when he's certain Shepard's fallen asleep, she says, "I just want to take every last one of the bastards out. But we've gotta find the head first."

"You know, Shepard, maybe it's not about finding the head." That's enough to make her sit up and _look_ at him, and that makes him chuckle a little.

"Who the hell are you and what have you done with my sniper?"

"I know. But bear with me. …What if what we're doing is picking off the cannon fodder, one by one, thinning the opposition down just enough so you can charge in with your shotgun and blow the bastards to hell?"

"You clear my path, I break their line?"

He shrugs a little. "It's worked well for us so far."

Shepard's smile is crooked as she runs the backs of his fingers along his unmarred cheek. His facial plating doesn't allow for a great deal of sensitivity, but his eyes close and he tilts his head into her touch. "As long as it's you at my back clearing my path," she says quietly.

His arms tighten around her with his reply. "You just try and get rid of me."

#

Inhale. Aim. Exhale. Shoot.

It's not the first time in Garrus' life he hasn't had Shepard's six. And it's not the first time in his life he's angry about it.

Inhale, aim. Exhale, shoot.

It _is_ the first time not being there, not watching her back, has been _someone else's_ damned call.

Inhale, aim; exhale, shoot.

The hell with Hackett. The hell with the Fifth Fleet. The hell with his damned _favors._

Inhale, aim, exhale, shoot.

Hackett sent Shepard smack into a worst-case scenario with no backup whatsoever, leaving her with no other damned _choice_ but to kill hundreds of thousands of lives in order to save millions more. If they'd sent a squad in, _like she'd wanted,_ there would've been more time — time enough to get _some_ of the batarian colonies evacuated. Maybe not all, but some. _Some_ was better than _none._

_Inhale aim exhale shoot._

And damned Shepard with her damned _nobility._ He'd told her once he was pretty sure his father would hate her on sight, simply by virtue of being a Spectre — but her being human probably wouldn't have earned her any points, either. Yeah. That was before she went back, on her own, to face the music, _on her own_. Damned near turian levels of a noble ideal, right there.

_Inhaleaimexhalesh—_

"I… could be wrong, but I think you got him."

Garrus starts and the Widow sends his shot veering sharply to the left of the target he's been… okay, decimating, and with a spray of splintering wood, the bullet embeds itself into the thick trunk of a tree. He lets out a deep breath and lowers his gun. "Hey, Sol."

"Dad said you were out here. You know, he liked that tree." His sister is standing behind him, arms crossed, leaning against a long table currently holding two other rifles and a cleaning kit. She picks one of them — the Viper, and he nods his approval at her choice — checks the clip, and reloads the gun.

"Yeah, well." He looks again at the tree in question. "Maybe I didn't kill it."

She grins, tipping her head at the tree. "What, you think scars give it character?"

"Hey, I've gotten no complaints." He's tried to avoid the topic of _who_ he hasn't gotten any complaints _from,_ but Solana's no idiot. It's one of her more annoyingly…_ endearing_ traits.

She lets out a long "Hmmmm," and raises the rifle, looking intently through the scope. "So what's her name?" she asks with too much patented innocence for him to believe her for a second, then squeezes the trigger. Solana's a hell of a shot.

She's also the furthest thing from subtle, and _this_ is a conversation they've had before. Only difference is he's never had to dodge it before. But he knows the answer anyway, and delivers it as perfectly scripted as he knows how. "You're assuming there's just one name."

"Garrus, do _not_ try and sell me any of that 'a girl at every station' crap," she says, firing off another shot. She sounds… _bored_, instead of irritated with him, which Garrus finds vaguely alarming.

"Solana, really, I don't know what you're—"

Heaving a mighty sigh, she lowers the rifle just enough to glare at him. "Your Commander Shepard. Tell me her name."

"_My_ Commander Shepard?" he echoes, incredulously. "_Mine? _Sol, I don't know what crazy idea you've got in your head, but—"

She shakes her head, lifts the rifle, and fires again. "You _really_ should do a better job of clearing out your cached extranet bookmarks, little brother." Then she looks over her shoulder at him. She's holding all the cards right now and she _knows it,_ damn it. "Some of those interspecies vids were pretty racy."

Garrus swears there's _glee _in her voice as she turns her attention back to the target. All he can do is stare at his sister_, _absently wondering if there's any chance the ground might open up right now and swallow him whole. But the ground's solid under his feet and there aren't any thresher maws on Palaven, which is a damned shame_._ So, really, he's got no other option beyond staring, because words — any words, _all_ of his words — have failed him, and Solana's not looking at him, but he can see her mandibles twitch as she tries not to smile, even as she sends another shot into the target he's set up. Damn it. _Damn _it.

"Wait, wait," he chokes out. "You _spied_ on me?"

"Well, _yeah_," she replies with a snort. "You just proved I wasn't going to get anywhere by _talking_ to you. Also, your encryptions? Kinda weak."

He lowers the Widow with a deep sigh, raising one hand to scratch absently at his brow plates. "Sol, it's… complicated."

"Spirits, Garrus, I just want to know her _name._" She adjusts the scope slightly and then shoots him a sideways glance._ "_Unless that's what you meant by complicated — human names can be a little weird."

"No, it's not weird, it's just—"

"Oh, good. That means you at least _know_ her name. Can't imagine that's terribly romantic, calling someone by their family name in bed."

_"Solana."_

Now she's grinning — _really_ grinning, and there's a devilish edge to it he hasn't seen since they were kids, and it worries him. "So you _did_."

"No idea what you're talking about," he replies, trying to go for "intentionally obtuse," but knowing he's running out of options here.

"Slept with her."

There's no doubt about it; Sol's out for blood. And he's losing it by the liter right about now. "Hell, Solana, what do you want from me?"

"Just the name of my little brother's future mate."

If Solana's trying to make him drop his gun — and Garrus is starting to think that's her goal — she's doing a fine job of it.

"…You've lost your damned mind. Mate? _Mate?_"

"Quit acting like I'm trying to make you blush, Garrus." She squeezes the trigger again. Hits the target, _again._ "You obviously care for this woman if you're researching human rituals and culture, _and_ if you're this pissed off the Alliance has her locked up. Sounds like it's for her own safety, though. Batarians want her head on a pike, from the sounds of it."

"How did you—"

"Dad was on the vidcomm with the Primarch when I came in. And before you ask, _no_, I wasn't eavesdropping — you know as well as I do he's getting hard of hearing."

He sighs, hard. "I told you, Sol, it's complicated. I can't…"

"You know, you keep telling me it's complicated like that's going to make me drop it. Tell me _how_ it's complicated, Gar."

He doesn't know where to start. He also knows, his sister's inclination towards nosiness notwithstanding, she can be his greatest confidante. When he wants and needs one. Which isn't often.

But now… maybe. _Maybe._ Spirits know he's got no one else to talk to right now.

"Listen," she says, popping the clip and reloading. "I've already figured out most of it. It was her ship you were on for that last mission." His sister then sends him a sharply reproving look. "The one you said was _classified._"

He grimaces, turns away. "Yeah." That last conversation with Solana still hurts to remember — their mother was alive before they went into the Omega 4 Relay, and dead by the time he came out.

"I knew it wasn't, Garrus." Solana says on a sigh. "But now I think I know why you told me it was."

"You had enough on your mind." He adjusts the Widow's scope, which doesn't need adjusting, then changes out the clip. "I didn't want you to worry."

She shakes her head and he can feel her rolling her eyes at him. "You are such a pain in my ass, you know that?"

"Well. Considering how often you've told me? …Yeah. I do."

"And my point, which you are _missing_," she adds, turning her head to shoot a glare his way — Solana is as deadly with her looks as she is with that rifle, "is that you can tell me this. You can tell me about her. Hell, I _want_ you to."

"What's there to tell, Solana? Shepard's the last friend I've got — maybe the only one. She's the person I respect most in the whole damned universe right now. She _died_ because I wasn't around to watch her back, and she's in Alliance lockup because I wasn't _allowed_ to watch her back. And it pisses me off, because she's the one damned thing that's gone right for me in years and I don't know when or even _if_ I'm gonna see her again—" The truth is edging too close to the surface for Garrus' comfort, but the words come out anyway. "And it might not even matter if I do. I don't know if she…"

_Shit._

Solana tilts her head, and there's such _understanding _in her eyes it almost hurts him to see it directed at him. "…Don't know if she feels the same way?"

It goes against everything in his blood — turians don't admit _weakness._ Yeah, he's said before he's not a very good turian, but this is… different. He hates not knowing what to do next, what he _ought_ to do next. Garrus has made it his habit to have a plan — even if that plan consists of nothing more than "shoot the bastards crossing the bridge until the ammo's all gone." But right now, he's got no plan. What he _does_ have, however, is a sister who is going to be damned hard to live with for the foreseeable future. "…Yeah."

"…By the _spirits,_ you are an idiot," Sol mutters, and Garrus wonders if he's that annoying when he's feeling confident. He decides he probably is, but that doesn't leave him feeling any more charitable towards his sister. After a long moment, exhales and shakes his head, in no mood to argue — or even shoot — right now. Setting the Widow on the table, he takes a seat, and after a second or two, Sol joins him. "You don't want to assume anything. I know, Garrus. Believe me, _I know._"

He begins methodically dismantling the Widow. "I hear a 'but' coming."

"But what if you're wrong?"

Garrus has been wrong before, of course. Granted, he prefers to think of it as "just slightly mistaken." Less of a sting to it, that way. Like when he'd asked Shepard if she was sure, if she didn't want something closer to home — a slight miscalculation on his part. He remembers the trepidation, the damned _anxiety_ he felt going up to Shepard's cabin after Liara left the _Normandy_. How damned sure he'd been Liara was back in Shepard's life, and how it was only a matter of time before she broke it to him. And he'd gone up to her cabin to try and make it easier on her, take the high road, let her think the time they spent together was nothing more than a way to relieve a little tension.

She'd proved him wrong, of course. It'd been more than a mistake, more than a miscalculation — he'd been completely ass-backwards _wrong._

He thinks of Shepard, in lockup on Earth, and of how restless, how at-odds he's felt since returning to Palaven.

_Home. It's… it's the place you come from, sure, but it's also… the place you want to be more than anywhere else._

"Thena," he finally says, quietly. "Her name's Thena."

"Good name," Solana muses, tilting her head to look at him. "Sounds strong."

"You don't know the half of it."


	3. Shoot

It's such an overused phrase, "All hell breaking loose." Or maybe Garrus just thinks so because he's walked into hell so many times by now that too many things pale in comparison. Not this, though. Not the sight of Palaven burning above him. Hell's broken loose and it's happening right above him as fire and explosions and goddamned _Reapers _eat away more and more of his world.

Garrus tries not to look at Palaven, not when the immediate priority is to protect the installment on Menae. Five minutes from now that priority could change and probably will, but for now it's time to hold the line and keep his men from getting swarmed.

He keeps his eye to the scope and blows another husk's head off its shoulders — two cannibals lumber into sight behind it and he fires off two rapid shots to slow them down and another to take one out completely; the other goes down in a spray of assault rifle fire, exploding into pulp. Right now the best thing he can do — the onlything he can do — is his job. Keep his eye on the enemy, keep them in his crosshairs, pull the trigger when it counts. If he's looking through the scope, he can't look up.

And if he doesn't look up, Garrus won't be reminded that his isn't the only planet burning, either.

It's only been four, maybe five days since the Reapers attacked Earth. There's precious little information coming through — they've got their own problems on Menae, not the least of which is a busted comm tower — but worry still gnaws at his gut. The Alliance has been blocking its ears to Shepard's warnings from the beginning. If the higher-ups didn't have the brains to get her out of lockup in time…

Crazy. His world — his _home_ — is burning above him, the universe is going straight to hell, and he's worried about his girlfriend.

Another husk — two, no _three_ — charge into his line of vision. It takes only a second before they line up and he can take two out with one shot. The third goes down with a second shot; it's not neat, but husks don't _need_ finesse.

A new brand of nightmare stalks into sight; he knows what it is even before the image focuses — the men have been calling them "marauders." Probably to distance themselves from the reality of it — they're Reaper-repurposed turians. They're more than just abominations, they're a damned _insult._ They also don't go down easily. He adjusts his ammo for synthetic targets and pulls the _thing_ into his sight again. He doesn't wonder who it was once, doesn't think about whether it was a buddy from the academy, or an old XO, or one of the men he was fighting with last week. Whoever it was, they sure as hell didn't choose this and a bullet through the head is the best favor he can do for them. Tough bastards, though — it takes two, sometimes three to the head just to bring them down.

_Girlfriend. _He shakes his head and reloads._ Don't use that word in front of Shepard; she'll knock you straight on your ass._ _Still, better than "mate." Solana wasn't letting that one go for anything. Spirits, if I didn't know better I'd think she's actively trying to give me a damn heart attack._

Then again, getting knocked on his ass might be worth it if it means seeing Shepard, because that'll mean she's alive and fighting somewhere. He tries the word out again, rolling it around in his head to get a feel for it, to see if it _fits._ He's not sure — Shepard doesn't strike him as anyone's _girlfriend._ Hell, him using the word at all is Solana's damned influence. And no matter what his sister says, there are no guarantees whatsoever that Shepard still feels the same way.

There isn't even any damned guarantee she's still alive.

He fires another synthetic disruptor round into the marauder's head — it's well-placed and the son of a bitch goes down in a frenzy of sparks and arcs of light. Things are quieter now; this wave is over, and the men are tending the injured and collecting the dead before the next surge hits. Garrus holsters his rifle and rolls his shoulders and neck until a series of dull cracks and pops come from beneath his armor. While the comm tower's down, Corinthus wants regular updates; he's about to send one of his men to the main camp to deliver the good news — and it _is_ good news when more Reaper forces than turians go down in a wave — when his comm channel starts spitting static and traffic.

They held the line _and_ the comm tower's fixed? That counts as a good day, and there haven't been a whole hell of a lot of those lately. Given the good news, better to go see Corinthus himself and find out who the hell pulled this one off. Last he heard, the tower was being overrun with husks and marauders and just about every damned Reaper nightmare imaginable.

He's barely taken two steps when he hears a voice come over the channel — a voice familiar enough to halt his steps and make him turn with a jerk to look at the newly-repaired tower: "General, do you read? The comm tower is now operational."

Corinthus' voice answers, tinny and static-laden: "Much appreciated, Commander. I'll contact Palaven Command."

"Let me know when you've got something. I'll help your men until I hear from you." Her voice. It's definitely her voice. He's heard it often enough in his ear — in some ways it sounds even _more_ like Shepard's voice with the metal-and-static edge the comm gives it.

"Understood."

"Shepard out."

It's a hell of a trek to the base where Corinthus is stationed right now, and Garrus wastes no time. Her voice in his ear was one thing, but hearing the words "Shepard out" seals it — whatever happened on Earth, she isn't injured, isn't dead, isn't stranded in a cell, and it feels almost like Omega again. Almost. This time there was too much uncertainty; the frustration of not-knowing has been almost worse than believing her dead and gone.

Shepard makes it to Corinthus' modular enclosure before Garrus does, and he can hear her voice — it carries over the noise all around them, and if there's one thing Garrus knows, it's that tone. It's the tone that makes things happen. _Hell, Shepard could probably train a klixin to jump through a hoop with that tone alone_.

"I need someone — I don't care who — as long as they can get us the turian resources we need."

_A fiery hoop,_ he adds, starting up the steps. The general's trying to explain the complete mess the hierarchy's in right now, and he's right — it also tells Garrus who Shepard's looking for. The primarch. Not a huge surprise, when you thought about it. And with Fedorian gone, the real surprise would be _who_ turned out to be Palaven's new leader.

"I'm on it, Shepard," he says by way of greeting. Best to play it cool; this isn't the time or place for anything less than pure professionalism. "We'll find you the primarch."

"Garrus!" It's no small consolation that Shepard isn't looking what you'd call _unflappable,_ herself. The look — the _smile _— lighting Shepard's face chases away every bit of "cool" Garrus Vakarian's ever known or possessed. It's a smile that goes all the way to her eyes, and it's been too damned long since Garrus has seen either Shepard's eyes _or_ her smile.

_Spirits, she's beautiful._

It's a blessing when Corinthus turns and sees him — it gives Garrus a chance to recover at least a little bit of his self-possession. "Vakarian, sir — I didn't see you arrive."

"At ease, General," he says. He just wants to _look_ at her until he's convinced it's really her. Hell, what he really wants to do is touch her. But… well. A time and place for everything. This is neither. Funny how he has to keep reminding himself of that.

Then she steps closer. _Hell,_ he thinks, but stands his ground remembering, _Professional. Be professional, damn it_. It isn't easy. Even with husk gore smeared across her armor and a streak of dirt across her forehead, she's the most welcome sight he's seen in days.

"You're alive," is all she says. He wonders if she's trying to convince herself _he's_ real, too.

With only a step or two, he closes the distance between them and takes her hand and, who knows, maybe he'd even _intended_ it to be a brisk, professional handshake at first. Hard to say, really, since, even through their respective gauntlets, the weight of her hand in his, the fact that she's there, _alive_, washes away everything else. Soon both of his hands are clasped around hers and as he looks down, he can see some of his own relief reflected in her eyes.

It hadn't occurred to him until right now that she'd be as worried as he was.

He leans close — probably closer than he should, given the time, the place, and the circumstances. But Garrus can't find it in him to give a damn just then.

"I'm hard to kill. You should know that."

#

"Not that I'm complaining," Garrus says, dousing the magazine with solvent and setting it aside, "but you give Vega one hell of a hard time."

Shepard's sitting on the couch in her quarters, her Graal in pieces in front of her. He's sitting across, his dismantled Widow in front of him, bottles of solvent and gun oil between them. She makes a face and shakes her head before scrubbing at the chamber.

"I do not."

"You've been busting his ass for at least as long as I've been aboard," he counters, pushing the solvent-soaked patch down the Widow's muzzle.

She snorts, then turns her attention to the butt of the shotgun. The sharp smell of gun oil fills her quarters, though there are only a few drops on the cloth. "It builds character. And I didn't realize you were the president and founding member of the Jimmy Vega Fan Club, _Scars_."

"He looks up to you, _Lola_." Cleaning the barrel is careful work, and in a way he's thankful for it — thankful to have something else to concentrate on. "And from what I saw on Menae, he's a hell of a soldier. What'd he do to get in your bad books?"

She doesn't answer right away, and he's not sure if it's because she doesn't want to, or because she's checking the barrel. Turns out it's the gun, because she scowls and dampens a cloth with solvent before pushing it down the barrel. "He hasn't done anything. Which is good, because I'm not giving him a hard time. _Because he hasn't done anything_."

"…Right." He wipes the magazine free of the solvent it's been soaked with. "So what's the real reason?"

With a sigh, she lowers the shotgun's barrel to look at him. "You're not letting this drop, are you?"

"The Widow is a complicated weapon, Shepard," he murmurs, wiping down the bolt. "Could take all night to clean her." One glance up reveals Shepard's scowl, and he looks back to the gun again. "I mean, it doesn't make sense. One of your brothers was a Marine, wasn't he?"

"…Jason." She checks the barrel again. Cleans it again. "Vega was my guard while I was… a _guest_ of the Alliance," she says, and Garrus has a feeling the Graal's barrel is going to be clean enough to eat with by the time Shepard's done with it. "First time I met him, I called him Jason. Played it off like an innocent mistake. James, Jason. Easy enough to brush aside."

"More to it, I'm guessing?"

She sighs, shakes her head, but never takes her eyes off the gun she's cleaning. "Jason was… obnoxious. He had this… this _swagger_ to him, you know? He was a show-off and a loudmouth and a pain in the ass. Troy and I gave him such a hard time."

"Sounds… familiar."

"Uh huh."

"So, what are you saying? That Vega… reminds you of your dead brother?"

"No." The barrel gets checked and cleaned a third time before she sets it aside. Shepard rests her elbows on her knees, curling her hands into fists once, clenching tightly before releasing and wiggling her fingers. "Vega reminds me that Jason was all of eighteen when he was killed. Vega's still a damn _kid_, and he's accomplished more than my older brother ever will. I see Vega and I see all of Jason's missed opportunities. All his unfilled potential."

"Leaving Vega off missions isn't gonna help Jason fill that potential, Shepard. And it's not gonna do Vega a bit of good, either." He watches her a moment. She's got her hands clasped together now, and she's looking down at them — Garrus can only wonder what it is she's really _seeing._ "…Try bringing him down on Aralakh," he suggests. "See how he does. Finding Wrex's scouts is pretty straightforward."

She peers up at him through her dark hair. "Wrex warned me there might be rachni."

"And if Vega's lucky, he won't piss himself first time he sees one."

"And who's busting his ass now?" she retorts with a chuckle.

He shrugs, turns back to the Widow. "I hear it builds character."

#

Somewhere in between the mother of all thresher maws, losing Mordin, and Udina's coup, it starts to occur to Garrus that the time might be coming sooner rather than later — and he's not putting it off till later, not _again_ — to find out beyond any doubt where things stand between him and Shepard.

Granted, the welcome she'd given him had been a warm one, and there was no misinterpreting the gleam in her eye when she told him they had "catching up" to do. But still, they'd been through hell together a few times by now, and Garrus is completely aware that everyone in the damned galaxy wants a piece of Shepard's time these days. He knows too well she's being pulled in ten different directions at once — and that's on a slow day — and maybe, just maybe a relationship isn't what she wants right now. They're in the middle of a damn war; she may not want the distraction.

Or she might. The only way to find out what Shepard does want is to ask her.

She's working herself too hard, and though there've been victories, he can see the defeats weighing her down, but making her push herself that much harder to avoid defeat on the next go-round. She needs a break, and he's determined to see she gets one. He suggests to Vega mentioning the cargo bays are getting a little too crowded with the items and artifacts they've been picking up. He implies to Liara that it's been a while since they've docked at the Citadel and she agrees, catching the subtleties of what it is he's implying. He hints to Adams that he might remind Shepard of a part she promised to pick up for him the next time they were at the Citadel. Garrus plants suggestion like seeds all through the _Normandy_ before sending Shepard a message of his own. It takes all of a day before word gets around they're on their way to the Serpent Nebula.

He already knows where they're going. Nowhere with old memories attached, that was for damned sure. Somewhere they'd be able to spend five minutes without a lingering, smoldering reminder of what Cerberus nearly managed to do. Somewhere anyone who wants a moment of Commander Shepard's time _won't_ be able to find her.

And he knows exactly what they're going to do.

Once the _Normandy's_ docked and Shepard's off the ship taking care of a few errands, he heads down to the bottom level. "Hey, Cortez," he says, strolling into the shuttle bay, "think you can part with a couple rifles for the day?"

The lieutenant gives him a strange look — they're on the Citadel, and, last visit notwithstanding, they don't usually go in armed. "Yeah," he answers, taking no pains at all to hide his confusion. "We just got the Black Widow IV the commander requisi—"

"Oh, no — nothing that fancy, Cortez," Garrus says on a chuckle. "Just give me a couple of Vipers and we'll call it good. The Viper I will do."

Cortez is now looking at him like he's lost his damned mind. "The Viper I," he echoes. "You're sure— the _Viper I?_"

"Yep."

"You know the specs on the Viper I — with respect… you might have better luck with a slingshot."

Garrus shrugs. "Maybe, but a slingshot hasn't got a scope. Unless you can rig one up. That might make it challenging."

"The hell are you gonna shoot with a damn Viper, Scars?" Vega yells from his workbench. "Pyjaks?"

"Nope," Garrus calls back.

"Tin cans?"

"Getting warmer."

Cortez grumbles a little, but takes the rifles out of their cases anyway and sets them on the bench, assembling one while Garrus assembles the other. "You should give him those last bottles of that damned mescal you tried to poison me with, Vega. Be glad to see that crap shot into oblivion."

The big Marine turns away from the gun he's modding, looking genuinely wounded. "Hey!"

"If you've got bottles to shoot, Vega," drawls Garrus, "I'd be happy to take them off your hands."

Vega sputters, his gun completely forgotten. "I _don't_ have— Esteban, what the hell're you tryin' to do to me here?"

"Force you to buy some _real_ tequila, that's what." The heavy thunk of ammo being set down on the bench punctuates the lieutenant's statement. "Come on, make with the bottles." And, though Vega bitches and grumbles the whole time, he produces several bottles of the liquor Cortez finds so damned offensive.

When it's all packed into a crate for inconspicuous transport, Cortez folds his arms, leans back against the console, and looks up at Garrus. "So, taking the commander bottle shooting?"

"I figured she'd like to shoot something that's not actively trying to kill her for once. …And, ah, how'd you guess?" Garrus asks the question mildly, but his curiosity's genuine. He really thought he'd done a better job of hiding… well, _everything_ since coming aboard. Apparently not.

Cortez just shrugs. "Well, for starters you did come down looking for rifles and bottles. As for the other part… there are just some things you notice, you know? That, on top of… well, it's not a big boat. You hear things."

Vega stops a moment and tilts his head, looking between Garrus and Cortez. "Wait, _what?_ Notice what? Notice… Scars and… and _Lola_?" Something clicks in the Marine's head and his eyes go wider as he processes the information. And then he gets it. "Scars. And Lola. You're shittin' me, Esteban."

His reaction is… pretty damned amusing, really, but Garrus tries not to enjoy it too much. There's still a lot he and Shepard have to talk about and there are still a lot of ways this can go — not the least of which is _sideways. _All the same he's… not exactly inclined to discourage Vega. Call it optimism.

For his part, Cortez looks to be enjoying James' shock more than anything else. "Sorry, James, looks like all that flirting was for nothing. But good for a laugh, let me tell you." Vega, his faith in the universe shattered — or at least pretty dented — goes back to his workspace, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. A moment later Cortez adds in a lower tone, with a knowing grin, "More fun watching the commander put him in his place a few times. Vega's a good guy, but he's got a big mouth. Spends a lot of time shoving his foot into it."

"She's… good at dealing with that," replies Garrus, schooling his chuckle into a cough. But there's something he wants to ask — something he needs to know, if Cortez figured it out already. "So. How long have you… um. When'd you notice anything was, uh. When'd you notice?" And it's not as if there's even anything _to_ know, he tells himself. Reunion protocols aside. Frantic, impatient kisses in the battery aside.

The lieutenant shoots him a _You're kidding me_ look and shrugs. "Since the flight back from Menae."

"Shit," he breathes. "That long?"

Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, Cortez explains, "It was the first time I saw the commander anything less than completely stressed out. You two got aboard that shuttle and she was relaxed as I'd ever seen her. She also hates sharing a seat with anyone. I learned that pretty quick. But she sat with you."

"Yeah, she likes her space." He remembers Shepard's crooked grin as she slid in next to him for the ride back to the _Normandy_, the way their shoulders bumped, despite that in Cortez's hands, the Kodiak hadn't given a single lurch. Her leg had been pressing against his, and he'd been able to feel the subtle pressure even through his armor. Their fingers had brushed — innocently, or so he'd thought — as they disembarked; the contact was entirely accidental, but they both jerked away guiltily.

_Yeah, we were subtle, all right. Subtle as Wrex driving the goddamn Mako._

"Show her a good time, Garrus. She deserves it. We worry about her down here. Commander's pushing herself hard."

"Believe me, I've noticed."

"Oh, I believe it." Cortez smacks his hand down on the crate's lid, settling it firmly into place before fastening it shut. "I think you're set. Guns, ammo, and Vega's cheap mescal."

"Sounds like a good time no matter which way you look at it," chuckles Garrus.

The lieutenant looks at the case a moment, then back up at Garrus. "It's… none of my business, but where the hell on the Citadel were you going to do all this?"

When Garrus tells him, Cortez's eyebrows nearly meet his hairline as he lets out a low whistle. "You've gotta be kidding me. There are, what, a hundred regs—"

"A hundred and thirty-seven, actually."

"Hey, you only live once, right?"

"Right," he says, hefting the crate into his arms. He should have enough time to snag a skycar and set things up before Shepard finds whatever the hell obscure thing Adams has sent her looking for. "Unless you're Shepard. Then you live twice and everyone else's gotta try that much harder to be impressive."

#

Shepard's gorgeous with a gun in her hands.

It's not exactly a sudden realization; he's known it all along — and it's not _just_ the weapon in her hands, either. He loves looking at her, regardless. But when she's holding a rifle, looking at her target, there's something about the way concentration settles over her face, the way her eyes narrow as he watches her target slide right into the zone with an ease Garrus — at one time — wouldn't have thought possible. It happens too fast for him to appreciate all the tiny moments that make up the whole effect: the way she lifts the gun, finds the bottle in her sights, and exhales softly before pulling the trigger.

_Damn._

She was right: he doesn't need vids. Not with her around. With Shepard around, he doesn't _want_ vids. Just her.

The corner of Shepard's mouth lifts up in a tiny, satisfied smile as the bottle explodes into shards of glass and vaporized liquor, and all Garrus can think about is the two of them getting back to that damned ship and up to her cabin and locking the door and turning off the comm and _hell,_ he's missed her. They've been on the same ship, going on the same missions, but there's been something missing, something that's been worming its way under his plates since that kiss in the battery. That kiss stirred up a thousand memories — the brush of her fingertips just beneath his fringe, the warm press of her lips against his neck, the light scratch of fingernails just inside his cowl, right where it's most sensitive — and all he wants to do right now is relive all of 'em, then make a thousand more.

_Solana's never going to let me live this down_, he thinks as Shepard wings the bottle into the air and he decimates it with a single shot. Even better if she doesn't, because that'll mean he gets to see his sister again at the end of this war. A little bit of gloating is a small price to pay for that, if it meant hearing those words come out of Shepard's mouth.

_I love you, Garrus Vakarian. _

And of course he'd been… less than suave in his reply, because all he could hear in his head was his sister crowing, "I told you so." On top of that, it's still too hard to forget he wasn't a failed C-Sec agent or former vigilante, and what the hell did he have to offer her anyway? Not half of what he knew she deserved, that was for damn sure.

But _right now_, as they're blowing up Vega's bottles of mescal, he knows the truth, even if he can't quite wrangle it into words yet. Right now, he's on the top of the Presidium with a gorgeous, tough, resourceful, kind woman, who takes at least as much of his bullshit as she calls him on. A woman who knows how to handle a gun, and who trusts him to watch her back every bit as much as he trusts her to watch his. A woman he's seen headbutt a krogan and verbally bitch-slap the salarian dalatrass.

And there's nowhere else _she'd_ rather be?

They've both got to make it through this war. He's lived without Shepard before — he's not going to do it again willingly.

He throws the bottle, gives it a little extra oomph, a little extra spin — some Vakarian flair, just for good measure — and he watches again as Shepard lifts the gun, looks through the scope, breathes in, breathes out, and pulls the trigger. But the the unthinkable happens: Shepard misses the shot.

She misses. _By a mile._

How in the hell did she miss? Hell, her headshot score has already surpassed his own — not that he's ever told her this, of course. There'd be no living with all the smugness, to say nothing of the gloating. (He also suspects she might attribute her increased skill to Cerberus' cybernetics, and he'd rather not remind her of that if he can help it.) No. There's no way Shepard ought to have missed that — unless…

"It was windy," she says with a little shrug, never meeting his eyes.

_Oh, you sneak,_ he thinks. Who says soldiers don't know the art of subterfuge? Well. If it'll make her happy, he'll play along. He's _great_ at gloating, even if it's not entirely genuine gloating. "I am Garrus Vakarian and this is my favorite spot on the Citadel," he crows, flinging his arms back and reveling in her mock-annoyance (and he _knows_ it's mock-annoyance; Shepard's always been lousy at hiding her smiles from him).

Besides, it _is_ his favorite spot now. It's the place where the only woman he wants to spend his life with told him she loved him and then missed the last shot she took — _just like the old days_ — and didn't expect him to notice. Maybe she's feeling nostalgic, too. Either way, he still can't wait to get Shepard back onto the _Normandy_.

Nostalgia's all well and good, but he's got a few new tricks up his sleeve he's been _dying_ to show her.

#

If anyone notices when Shepard disappears up to her cabin at the earliest opportunity, no one comments on it. Maybe they think she's getting some much-deserved, much-needed rest. Garrus and Liara know better, though.

"I'll keep an eye on things," Liara tells him. "Go."

Since it's exactly what he was going to suggest anyway, Garrus agrees. "Give a yell if anything…" he's about to say "goes wrong," but plenty's already _gone wrong_ today and actually saying the words feels like it'd just invite bad luck. "Well. You know."

Liara seems to read his thoughts and nods. "If anything comes up — anything I can't handle myself — I'll let you know."

With a nod, Garrus turns to leave Liara's quarters. "Think she's sleeping? No, wait. Don't answer that."

"It's… doubtful," she replies, typing rapidly on the holo-keyboard, "no matter how badly she could use the rest."

Usually Shepard can be counted on to listen to reason; she's not losing sleep out of sheer stubbornness, even if she's got enough of that to go around. There's something else going on here, anyway. Once he's alone in the elevator, he addresses the ceiling. "EDI? Got anything you can tell me about Shepard's vitals?"

"Upon entering her quarters, Commander Shepard accessed her private terminal for fifteen minutes, thirty-two-point-six seconds. Afterward, heartbeat and breathing rates both slowed and her core body temperature dropped one-point-two degrees, indicating a state of light sleep. However, that state lasted thirty four minutes, sixteen seconds. She is no longer asleep, but neither has she moved from her previous position. According to Shepard's vital signs, I read increased heartbeat and rate of breathing twenty-six minutes, two seconds into her sleep cycle. Commander Shepard should not have entered her first REM stage so soon; however, general sleep deprivation would account for the abnormality. I suspect something is disturbing her rest."

_Nightmares. Damn it._ In all the nights they shared a bed, there was only one time Shepard woke up screaming, but he's stopped counting the nights the mattress shuddered softly when she jerked awake with a gasp. He's a light sleeper; it only took a few times before he began to expect it, before he learned the best thing to do was reach out for her and simply _hold_ her, reminding her of what was _real,_ until her breathing slowed again, until her grip on his arms relaxed. "More bad dreams," he murmurs.

"That is the likely conclusion."

He opens the door without using the chime first — it's not the first time he's been in her quarters and it won't be the last, not by a long shot. They try not to flaunt what it is they're doing — this is an Alliance ship again, after all — but life's too damned short; they know that better than most after all they've been through together. In particular, Garrus doesn't give a good goddamn what Admiral Hackett might have to say about their arrangement; as far as he's concerned, that man lost all of his say-so after sending Shepard to Arahtot.

All the same, it's smart to be discreet.

She's still dressed — though he gives her points for having taken off her boots — and, true to EDI's word, she's sitting up on the bed, arms clutched tightly around herself, staring at the fish tank, gaze fixed on a point only she can see. When she looks up, it's with a sudden start, blue eyes going wide. It's not easy to sneak up on this woman, which means she's either reaching new levels of exhaustion, or the nightmare that woke her still has its hooks in her.

"I don't know why you insisted on getting that damned eel," he says mildly, walking in as the door closes behind him. "It's the furthest thing from relaxing in that whole tank." The animal in question zips from one side to the other, its long body zig-zagging as it goes. "Ugly, too."

"I like it."

"So this is a pattern I should know about? You've got a soft spot for creepy beasts? Your hamster doesn't really fit your MO, considering the eel, your varren buddy back on Tuchanka—"

"Urz," she supplies, sliding to the edge of the bed and looking up at him. "And men with scars, according to you."

"That's not creepy; that's just good taste. You get any sleep?"

With a noncommittal shrug, Shepard turns back to the aquarium. "A little."

"Could probably use more than a little. It's been a rough day, but… at least we got Legion by the end of it, huh? That's gotta count for something." Her answering smile is too tight to be genuine; in fact, it looks more like a grimace. He sits. "Shepard. I'm… not going to ask you how you're doing."

"I'm… I'm okay, Garrus. I'm just… tired." A lie mixed with a truth — the easiest thing in the world to believe. But Garrus knows better.

"That's what happens when you don't sleep." Despite his teasing tone, she doesn't laugh. Doesn't smile. Doesn't react at all. Her posture is rigid, and she's clutching at herself so tightly he can see the way her fingers dig into the flesh at her elbows. Gripping. Holding on. She's clutching at herself as if she might…

Then he realizes, and when the realization hits him square in the gut, it leaves him cold and a little sick.

The dreadnought. The docking tube. And Shepard in her armor and mag boots with nothing but bent and broken metal standing between her and space. She'd said she was fine, and he'd believed her. _Idiot._

"Come here," he says quietly. When she doesn't respond, he sighs. "Thena. Please."

That gets her attention. Finally, she lowers her arms, placing her hands flat on her knees. The movement is too practiced, too deliberate, and far too controlled. "Told myself it didn't matter. That it didn't bother me. That I was fine."

"You fooled us," he said, running a hand up her arm, sliding it around her shoulders. "Hell, you fooled me." He pauses a moment, tilting his head closer to hers. "I don't want to be fooled, Shepard. Not by you." He clears his throat. It's clear to him why she's skipping out on the sleep: the Reapers are one thing; they're an enemy she can form a strategy to fight. Bad dreams just… screw her out of good sleep. Can't line a dream up in the crosshairs or unload a shotgun on it. "It was the— it was that dream again, wasn't it?" He doesn't have to go into detail; they both know what he's talking about.

"Sort of. It's… different. A little. It's still… space and stars and- and I can't… I can't _breathe_. Except this time you were there, damn you—"

He's never featured in her dreams before. Well. Not the nightmares, at least. He doesn't know about the better ones; he'd like to hope he's made an appearance in her better ones. "What'd I do?"

"I kept hearing you through my comm. Oxygen's running out, and I know I'm dying, and all I can hear is you yelling at me to breathe. All I've gotta do is breathe, and I'll make the shot."

"Well, at least it's good advice."

"Not when the air's running out."

He brings a hand under her chin and turns her head so he can look her in the eye. "You weren't dying, Shepard. It was a dream."

"Easy enough to know that _now, _when I'm awake and you're here."

"Yeah, but you said yourself, this time I was there."

"Yelling at me to breathe."

He just shrugs. "At least I'm consistent?" Her smile is a wan one and he pulls her a little closer. Her arms go around him immediately, and with a little maneuvering, he's easing her back onto the bed, back against the pillows. "So, how'd you make it across the dreadnought without panicking?"

She looks up at him, her hand resting feather-light against the scarred side of his face, as if there stands a chance she might hurt him. "Breathed," she admits, her words tinged with sheepishness. "Looked down the tube. Waited. And when I found my route, I blocked everything else out, and I just… went."

"So you made the shot." He grins at her, dipping his head and saying in her ear, "Looks like your boyfriend gives excellent advice in your dreams as well as real life."

#

The Spectre shooting range is positively high-class compared to anywhere else they've shot, ever. Still can't compare to shooting bottles at the top of the Presidium, but nothing else can. Something's bothering Shepard, and it's her suggestion rather than his that they go find things to shoot at. The fact that she's got her Black Widow and not one of her other rifles tells him she's more interested in blowing the hell out of something than working on finesse. Fair enough — Shepard's more than earned some time to do damage for damage's sake.

And it takes absolutely zero time whatsoever before he figures out that the targets she's hitting are wearing very specific faces. The salarian dalatrass. Kai Leng. …He's not sure who she blames for what happened to Legion, though, and it reminds Garrus of old conversations about whether the Reapers have heads or not.

When her targets are all smoking ruins, she pulls back and looks at hers, then his.

"Just like the good old days," she murmurs under her breath. Shepard's targets are filled with holes, lacking any sort of precision. His are… not. In fact, they're probably exactly what she expects from him.

"Difference is that you did all that on purpose," he says, unloading another round into the target before looking up. "And you _were_ breathing, so I can't really fault you on that."

She lifts her shoulders in a graceful little shrug, incongruous in her armor. "…Okay, so maybe I needed to let off a little steam."

With a pointed look back at Shepard's targets, he says, "You don't say. So. You ready to talk about it?"

"I don't know if there's anything to talk about, Garrus. I'm tired. I am so _damned_ tired of losing people. People keep dying and there's not a thing I can do about it."

"It's a war, Shepard," he says on a sigh, keeping his tone matter-of-fact without being too harsh. "We're going to lose people. Good people."

"Not _my_ people," she grits out through her teeth, reloading the gun with more force than strictly necessary. "To hell with ruthless calculus. Not my people, not my crew, not my damn squad."

"What, you think us being a part of your squad means we get to cheat death along with you?" he asks, drawing himself to full height and looking down at her. "All it means is that we're just that much more dedicated to watching your back, to making sure you don't fail."

It may be the truth, but it's not the right thing to say; she's shaking her head even before he finishes. "I don't want—"

"Don't you dare say you don't want our sacrifices, Shepard." Their losses, _all of them _— Legion is only the most recent — have hit him hard, too, and the words come out a little sharper than he intends. He takes a breath, lets it out. "Don't cheapen anyone's death that way."

"When someone — when one of _my people_ dies, Garrus, it's just another damned way I failed them. I should've put a bullet through Kei Leng's head the first opportunity. I didn't. I should've come up with a better way for Mordin—"

"Mordin sacrificed himself to save an entire species, Shepard. You want to blame anyone for what happened to Mordin, blame the damn dalatrass. And Legion — what, were you supposed to know more about Reaper code than a geth? He sacrificed himself for his species — he knew what he was doing. We're your people, Shepard, but being loyal to you means being loyal to your mission. If there's something worth dying for, we'll die for it."

The silence that follows is complete — Garrus isn't even sure how long it lasts, just that Shepard is staring hard at him in the stark light. When she finally does say something, her voice sounds… hoarse. Tight. "…Stop saying 'we,' Garrus. Please." She puts down her gun and crosses the distance between them, and when her hands find his face she pulls him closer until he can feel every uneven, shallow breath passing from her lips. "Stop saying _we._"

"I'm sure as hell not excluding myself. I want to see the end of this war more than anyone — and more than anything I want us to see the end _together_. But—"

Suddenly Shepard's mouth is pressed against his. He wonders for a second if someone might walk in, but it takes only a second for him to decide he doesn't give even half a damn just then.

When she pulls away, it's just far enough to breathe a whisper against his mouth. "No buts. I don't want to finish this without you, Garrus."

"And you're not going to. No one watches your back but me," he murmurs, pushing her hair back from her face, resting his forehead against hers. They're pressed together despite their armor, despite the smell of guns and oil and the lingering scent of smoke around them, and there is nowhere in the universe he'd rather be. "We're in this together. And, all right, without any 'buts.' Deal?"

"Deal."

#

It's probably a good sign he can't hear the music _through_ Shepard's door, but it's loud enough that she doesn't hear it open, doesn't hear him walk in. The music's also loud enough that the sound of his jaw hitting the floor is also muffled. One advantage to being a sniper is that Garrus often finds himself away from the action — the best vantage point is higher up and further away, and usually he _likes_ it that way. Right now, he wants nothing more than to be right in the thick of the action.

Shepard is dancing.

Garrus has given Shepard crap — a huge ration of it — for her dancing before; he's seen it up close and personal, and really, the less said about her skill on the dance floor, the better. But what she's doing now… is forcing him to shift most of his opinions regarding Shepard moving her body in rhythm to music. And it's a pretty significant shift.

What's playing is nothing like the pounding bass that resonates through clubs like Afterlife or Purgatory, or even like most of what pulses through his visor during a firefight — it has a slow beat, and stringed instruments scatter notes up and down the scale.

_Acoustic,_ he thinks. _Interesting._

The movement originates at Shepard's hips and moves through the rest of her body, reminding him distantly of ripples on water. She's fresh from a workout and there's a flush tinging her skin; the tank top she's wearing is dark and sweat-damp, but it also shows off her shoulders and shoulder blades, her arms — even the line of her neck . The shorts highlight her legs; as Shepard moves, the muscles flex, and Garrus takes a moment to appreciate the fact that Shepard has some _great_ legs. The whole package is pretty damned fantastic, really, but he's kind of partial to the legs.

Shepard twists and slinks to the music, rolling her shoulders, tipping her head back, all muscle control and rhythm and _flexibility,_ and he doesn't want to say a damned word right now, because that would break the spell and _this_ would end. But he can't just _stand_ here, either. So when there's a lull in the music, he coughs, clearing his throat. Predictably, Shepard gives a start and turns, eyes wide. It's a look that's all too familiar to him; it's the kind of look that comes right before—

"What the hell, Garrus? Are you _trying_ to scare ten years off my life?"

That's about what he expected, though the wording is somewhat alarming. "Can I actually _do_ that?"

"Figure of speech."

"Right. Well." Garrus looks at her legs again and damn near loses his train of thought completely. "That's good."

She breathes in and exhales hard through her nose. "Standing there long?"

He likes her calves in particular, the way her legs taper down to the ankles. The ankles are nice, too. "Not long, no. But… ah, long enough." When he brings his eyes back up to hers, there's a cool blue glare boring into his head. "Um. Should I have knocked? Or is there another reason you look like you're ready to impale me on your omni-blade?"

"Just waiting for the inevitable crack about my dancing. You know, there's a _reason_ I don't like to dance in public."

"Shepard, if you actually did in public what I just caught you doing, I'm pretty sure no one would give you crap about your dancing ever again." He rubs the back of his neck a moment before adding on a more-than-sheepish mutter, "…Because I probably would've blinded all of them."

Her shoulders relax and she tilts her head, brow furrowing. "So it wasn't… _bad._"

There's little more he can do than shrug. "No. No, it was, ah. Good."

It's not the smile she gives him that tells him how much trouble he's in. Oh, no — he likes the smile. He's _fond_ of the smile. What scares Garrus just a little is the way Shepard's smile goes crooked, tilting into a grin that goes all the way to her eyes.

"Whatever happened to _no comment_?" she asks, coming slowly closer. The muscles in her calves tighten and release with every step.

"You know, you could've shut me up pretty quickly then and there. Your own fault, really." He's getting hoarse, she's flushed and grinning and, _spirits_, those eyes are gonna be the death of him right after her legs. "Hell, you could shut up a lot of people, if you wanted. I've never seen you move like that on a dance floor, Shepard."

Shepard's grin fades a little, into something more pensive. "I don't — it's… it's different when people are watching, Garrus. I can't… let go in front of an audience."

"I can see where that'd be a problem. That little thing you did with your shoulders got _my_ attention."

Shepard looks at him for a moment or two, as if trying to decide whether he's serious or not. "What, you want me to… dance for you?" she asks, letting out a breath of incredulous laughter.

"Hell no. Watching's just a waste, anyway." He closes the distance between them in one step, breathes in the warmth coming off her skin, and murmurs into her ear, "What I want, Shepard, is to join you."

There's a breathy quality to her voice that gets suddenly husky the moment he touches her waist, drawing her closer. She does the aforementioned _thing_ with her shoulders, and it's every bit as good the second time around. "Never seen you dance, before, Vakarian."

"Never had a good enough reason before."

#

Fully extended, the Black Widow makes up more than half of Shepard's height. Doesn't stop her from doing a whole hell of a lot of damage with it, and nowhere is this more obvious than Sanctuary. Something else is fueling Shepard on this mission, though he doesn't know what — especially since what's going on at Sanctuary is bad enough on its own — but there's something different in the way she's moving. There's something more than her usual purpose propelling every step as she checks data logs and PDAs. She's even more unforgiving than usual when she takes out whatever's standing in their way. The deeper they get into the facility, the more gruesome their discoveries become, and the angrier Shepard gets. She's slid into an entirely different mode, and it only motivates Garrus to watch her back more closely. He knows her better than to think she'll get reckless or stupid, especially not with this much riding on the line, but he's never seen her quite this… _angry_ before.

For all that her skills with the sniper rifle have made her a hell of a force to be reckoned with, Shepard's true skill as a soldier shines when she's in the thick of a fight, when she has a number of different enemies to face and different strategies for nearly all of them. A wave of husks get the SMG or assault rifle, depending on which she has in her hands at the moment. She deals with brutes and banshees from a distance when she can, firing at them with her Scorpion pistol; as she ducks under cover to reload, the ammo explodes — until she's out of ammo. Then her shotgun makes an appearance, and though that always means getting in a little too close, there's still a part of Garrus that loves watching her make that weapon dance. She favors headshots with the marauders — and it doesn't matter whether she uses a sniper or an assault rifle, the result's still the same: hulking steel bodies with their heads blown clear off their shoulders.

The way she pushes them through every room of horrors throughout Sanctuary, Garrus becomes more and more certain something is wrong, far beyond the obvious. Slowly something ruthless and relentless starts to come through — she starts taking out husks with her bare hands, grabbing them by the throat and slamming them to the ground, or running them through with her omni-blade.

By the time they reach Miranda and her crazy father, Shepard is streaked with gore, but one look at the set of her jaw and the fire in her eyes tells him she'd take on another hundred of those things without batting an eye.

It's almost a relief when they get back to the _Normandy_.

He finds her, later, fresh from her shower, wrapped in a pale blue robe and rubbing a towel over her wet hair.

"Feeling better?" he asks, knowing the answer's no.

True to form, Shepard shakes her head. He likes that he can count on her honesty "I think I might've used up every damned drop of hot water on the ship trying to scrub that place off me."

"How're you doing now?"

"I still don't feel clean, if that's what you're asking." She hangs the towel on a rack in the bathroom and pads silently to the bed, sitting on the edge. Taking her tacit invitation, the mattress dips when he joins her.

"Cerberus is a pretty dirty organization. Working with you only helped their reputation, and even then, not by much."

"I… I thought we'd seen everything, Garrus. I really thought we saw every rotten, horrible, despicable thing the universe had to show us, but there's always more, isn't there? And the worst part? We always show up too _damned_ late to make a difference. Every one of those… those _things_ we killed down there were people once. They had lives and families and friends and lovers and children—" Shepard's voice cracks on the word, but — like a good soldier — she shakes it off and pushes forward. "And it was bad enough when the Reapers were sucking the life out of every species in the galaxy, but…" she trails off, gritting her teeth, and there's still that righteous anger in the set of her shoulders.

"But…?" he asks softly, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. She resists a moment before leaning against him, then wraps both arms around him, tucking her head against the crook of his neck.

"We aren't supposed to be doing this kind of shit_ to each other_."

That's occurred to him, too. "I know."

"And… it's easy to forget about the lives that were taken away when something's trying to kill you. I… I don't want to forget that, Garrus."

His fingers find her damp hair, and he slowly lets it separate under his talons. "Careful, Shepard. You do that, it gets harder to pull the trigger."

"No," she says quietly, pulling away and looking up at him. "I don't think so."

This goes contrary to everything he's heard, everything he _knows._ "…How do you figure?"

It takes a few seconds for her to answer, but in that time he can feel her begin to relax the longer he combs back her hair. "Back at one of our first supply stops at the Citadel, there was… a couple — a turian and an asari. They had two daughters. I… I wasn't _eavesdropping,_ but… there something about them." She stops to clear the huskiness from her throat. "I remember thinking people like that are who we're fighting for. The… the normal people with normal worries, like dance classes for their kids, or whether they need to pick up another shift at work, or… Just… people. With lives."

When she looks up at him again, Shepard's eyes are bright with tears.

"What happened?" he asks, his own voice barely above a whisper.

"Her husband… told her to go to Sanctuary. Begged her to go, to take the kids. Because it was _safe._" She spits out the word as muscles tighten and bunch in her back and arms. She dashes the tears away with her sleeve, and Garrus decides he's going to pretend he never saw them. "They were going to _take out a loan_ because relocating to Sanctuary wasn't cheap, which just means the sons of bitches not only turned them into monsters, they _took their money too._"

"Is that why…" Shepard's gaze turns quizzical and for a moment Garrus debates whether to ask the question at all. "Is that why you were so damned angry down there?"

"Obvious, huh?"

He remembers the ragged, hoarse yell she let out before pushing her omni-blade into the husk. "…Yeah. It was."

She lets out a long, deep sigh. "You know, even before today, every single marauder I see, every one that comes into my scope… I look at their faces and wonder if you knew them once. If you served with them once. If you drank beers after a mission together, or if you grew up down the street from one of them. I think of that and everything else… fades away — the gunfire, the explosions, the noise. There's nothing but the scope and crosshairs. Every husks or banshee or brute makes me think of every mind those sons of bitches indoctrinated and every life they ruined. How many families they destroyed. And…I was all right until it started becoming really clear things weren't on the up and up. I'd started putting the pieces together before we found the first lab — I was just hoping to god I was wrong. I… really would've loved to be wrong today, Garrus. Just today."

"You might've still been wrong, Shepard," he says into her hair.

"Yeah?"

"There's always a chance she never went to Sanctuary in the first place."

#

All's quiet on the _Normandy_, and it strikes Garrus as he makes his way to Shepard's quarters, that he's seen this kind of stillness before. Twice before, in fact.

It must be a night for reflection, because as he exits the elevator a wave of familiarity rushes over him. He remembers standing on this same threshold, clutching a bottle of wine and hoping to all the spirits above and below that he wasn't about to make a complete idiot of himself. It turned out all right — better than just "all right" — and even the mission through the Omega-4 Relay had gone more or less according to plan.

Oh, they've had their bumps — Shepard winding up incarcerated being one of the larger ones — but they've navigated those bumps and twists. And it's true, not everything's turned out _well_ (Thessia comes to mind), they've dusted themselves off and helped each other up — propped each other up, in some cases — and they've faced the next round of whatever the Reapers or Cerberus can throw at them, head on.

There are some days he can't quite figure out how they all managed to live this long — and that's just taking into consideration the basic law of averages. But there are other days he thinks, _Bring it on, you sons of bitches,_ as he clearly places in his mental crosshairs who or whatever's trying to kill them that week, that day, that _hour_.

He's lingered on the threshold too long, and it occurs to Garrus, however briefly, that maybe tonight they'd be better off sleeping separately — tonight they might need their sleep more than the need each other. But he doesn't entertain that idea for long; he's made that mistake before — waiting too long for the perfect shot — and he won't make it again; perfect shots seldom occur off the training field. Perfection in a firefight's usually called _luck, _and it's sure as hell not the sort of thing you wait around for.

The doors open with a rush, revealing Shepard, sitting on her bed, reading — a mission briefing, no doubt — and Garrus takes a moment to marvel how he came to have such a woman, such a presence in his life. Luck, he guesses. Plain, dumb, blind _luck_. But that's luck for you — can't wait for it, but it'll show up the second you're not looking for it, not _ready_ for it. There'd been a thousand times — a million — Shepard could have kicked him off her ship for no reason at all. Hell, she could have told him no at the first opportunity.

But she didn't, and here he is. And when she looks up at him and smiles — and, oh, it's a tired smile, with exhaustion around the edges and the grief of lost squad members woven throughout, but he loves it all the same. In quiet moments like these, he's almost surprised at the intensity of his feelings for this woman. In these moments lives an even quieter truth, one that beats with his heart, expands with every breath — he loves her.

And, more than anything, he hopes the two of them live to see the end of this — both of them, or neither. He cannot imagine another hand in his — five fingers wrapped around three. He cannot imagine another mouth pressed against his, soft lips against firmer plates. He cannot imagine another's body close to his, yielding curves and hard angles fitting so well together.

"Joined," Javik called it, to Shepard's chagrin; she is private and doesn't share easily — Garrus is fully aware of this, but he still loved the blush at her cheeks as she relayed the conversation to him.

_"So, Javik asked me if I and 'the turian' were joined. Turns out, rather than giving him credit for being really perceptive, my pheromones gave it away."_

_"Well, they are pretty fantastic pheromones."_

_"My god, do not tell me you can smell them too, Garrus."_

_"No, but it was worth it just to see your face."_

Joined. Garrus can think of no better word.

#

The shuttle bay door closes, and after the brightness of the battle, of Harbinger's lasers, it takes time for his eyes to adjust. The sound of gunfire, of men and women fighting and dying still echo through the hull, but then the _Normandy_ starts to lift and everything else grows dull beneath the sound of the ship's engines.

He still can't believe Shepard took him out of the fight. She _took him out._

This makes the third time he has not been there to watch her six, and it's got him _furious._ Beyond that, the fact that his girlfriend pulled rank and then forced him to evac is insulting on a deeply turian level. "Die for the Cause" does not mean "run away because you got a scratch." He's got more fight left in him, damn it, and he _knows_ why Shepard made the call.

_"I'm tired of losing people, Garrus. People keep dying and there's not a damned thing I can do about it."_

Well, she just did something about it. And he's left staring at the shuttle bay doors, his anger and injuries trying — and failing — to drown out the hollowness, the aching hole he feels right in his chest — try as he might to find that famed sniper's patience that's lived inside of him since he nailed his first headshot, the well is empty. He can't push everything aside and focus, because there's nothing for him to focus on but his injuries and the fact that Shepard's in this fight alone. He can't look down the scope and block everything else out right now; he's too angered by the injustice of it all — if there's no Shepard without Vakarian, then there can't be a Vakarian without Shepard, and _damn it_, this _wasn't supposed to happen._

Solana called it — he loves Shepard. Has for a while. And when she'd run her fingers across his face and whispered, _I don't know what I'd do without you,_ the words he thought but didn't say were,_ I know exactly what I'd do without you, because I already damn well did it. _And the fact that she's out there in that shitstorm alone hurts more than his ribs, more than his ruined knee — not because he thinks for a second Shepard needs saving, but if she's going to die out there, he doesn't want her to die alone. She's done that once already.

_You'd better survive this thing, Shepard, because when you get back, we're gonna have one hell of a talk about the crap you just pulled._

He's still leaning heavily on Tali, and she's supporting his weight without complaint as hobble their way to the elevator with slow steps as he favors his leg. She's probably got a whole infirmary worth of antibiotics rushing through her system right now — there's blood on her suit, and that means a rupture somewhere. Tali may be taking his weight right now, but he bets she's hurt worse than he is. Then the rapid clatter of boots against metal gets louder and closer as Gabby Daniels and Vega charge into the shuttle bay.

"Holy shit, you're alive," Vega blurts, taking up his other side as Daniels takes over for Tali. It's a hell of a lot easier to keep off his bad leg with Vega taking the majority of his weight.

Daniels sends Vega a sharp look, then explains, "EDI wasn't getting any readings on Garrus. We… maybe panicked a little."

Tali takes out her omni-tool as they shuffle to the elevator. "His armor's fried," says Tali, shaking her head. "No metabolic scans, the medi-gel dispenser is dead — cracked, too, I'm reading leaks — shield emitters, omni-tool… everything's dead."

"Everything _but_ me, it looks like."

"The armor did its job, then," she says, looking from her readout back to him.

So the armor's ruined. And maybe later — much later — he'll give a damn.

It was nice armor. A gift from his father without much explanation beyond his insistence Garrus needed to look respectable if he was going to be taken seriously as any sort of expert in charge of even a token task force; it's another example of _Do it right or don't do it at all. _But even good armor with the best shield emitters — and his had saved his ass more times than he can count by now — can't stand up to being hit by a tank. He can smell the fried emitters — at least he hopes it's the emitters and not _him_.

It is a mercifully short trip to the medbay from the elevator. Daniels is apologizing under her breath every time he winces or hisses in a breath. Chakwas is ready and waiting for them in the medical bay; his body jostles painfully in the armor as the doctor and Vega remove it piece by piece while Daniels helps Tali contend with her suit's damage. A few of the pieces are fused, separating with a sharp crack when Vega forces them apart. The more armor comes away, the grimmer the doctor's expression becomes.

"You're damned lucky, Garrus," she mutters, dismissing Vega and Daniels both, who hurry back to the chaos reigning the rest of the ship. Tali's suit is patched and she's resting, which is good enough for the moment, but from the sideways looks Chakwas is sending her, she's clearly next. Chakwas' brisk hands, cold even encased in gloves, go over him, checking every injury, poking and prodding — until he swears, in some cases; when that happens, she simply nodded to herself, saying things like, "Yes, I thought so" and "Hmm, maybe just a hairline fracture; we'll have to take a closer look" under her breath.

"I've heard a few… conflicting stories," Chakwas finally says. "What happened to you?"

"Someone threw a tank at us," he deadpans through his wince.

He can't get over how… _wrong_ this feels, to be out of the fight so early, to _not_ make that final push with Shepard. The three of them had faced down everything together. Saren. The Collector base. It's always been them. In fact, when it came down to choosing her team, Garrus found himself unsurprised when Shepard tagged himself and Tali for the push through London. At his look, she'd just given him that crooked grin of hers and shrugged. _You guys are my good luck charms._

Some luck. Shepard's out there, alone. She's smart and resourceful and damned determined enough to do whatever needs to be done, but history's shown him that good things don't tend to happen when he's not there to watch Shepard's six.

Hell, maybe he _is_ her good luck charm. The thought doesn't make him feel any better.

Chakwas confers with her omni-tool, telling her what he's already suspected; significant burns from both the explosion and his armor's overload, broken and bruised ribs — no punctured lungs, though, and that's a blessing — and a dislocated shoulder. His knee took the worst of it, and the doctor sets the bone as quickly and… well, as painlessly as possible. She wants to give him something for the pain, but Garrus refuses to be doped up; they reach a compromise in the form of medi-gel applications, though Garrus suspects the doctor will not be willing to compromise for long.

The most pressing injuries attended to, Chakwas turns her focus on Tali; she's starting to spike a fever already, and in no time at all the doctor has her set with fluids and antibiotics supplementing her suit's existing functions. Tali soon falls into a fitful sleep and Garrus is left to stare out the medbay's window with nothing to do but wonder. Crew members rush from one end of the ship to the other, sometimes stopping by the large window and glancing in; Garrus can't stand the looks on their faces, running from pity to worry — he wants to know what's _happening,_ what they know that he doesn't.

He'd give anything to talk to Traynor at this point, and he's about to ask Chakwas if the comm specialist might be willing to give him an update, when the woman herself bursts into the room.

"She did it — she bloody well _did it,_" she cries. "The commander made it to the Citadel! Evidently Admiral Anderson did as well — we're picking up fragments of comm chatter, nothing I can really make out short of a word here or there. Probably with the arms closed the signals are being jammed and we can't—"

The news is enough to make him sit up before letting out a sharp hiss of pain, ignoring the look Chakwas sends him. "She gets the arms open, you can open a channel?"

"…Possibly. Yes. Maybe." Traynor's face screws up in thought. "It depends. Definitely maybe."

It's the furthest thing from definite, but he's not feeling very picky right now. "So if you can open a channel—"

"But—"

"_If you can,_ when she opens the arms, then can you patch me through to her?"

Traynor's eyebrows furrow together and she looks down — she's trying to figure out how to make that happen. "I… _maybe_. It depends. I'll see what I can do." She meets his eyes and… he's not sure what she sees there, but after a second or two, Traynor nods more firmly. "I'll see what I can do."

It's not much, but it's something, and that's enough.

#

He isn't sleeping — he can't sleep — but he _is_ lying still. It's the only way he can keep Chakwas from pumping him with drugs enough to take down a thresher maw. It's too important to him to stay awake. Shepard's in the Citadel — all they can do now is wait. There was a time he was good at waiting, when patience came second nature to him.

Those days seem far away now.

When the medbay door hisses open again, he turns his head to see both Specialist Traynor and EDI come in — Traynor looks harried and frazzled, EDI looks… troubled, which is saying a lot for her. It's EDI's look that has Garrus worried, though, as Traynor quickly and expertly hooks a spare omni-tool up to him. "The Citadel arms are open, and it's as we thought — the signals _were_ being jammed, but…" Traynor trails off, looking to EDI.

"Admiral Hackett has been able to raise Commander Shepard on the comm," she explains. "She… does not sound… well." The omni-tool comes to life with just the barest stutter. "But I have established a channel to Commander Shepard's comm system."

"I… need to get back to the CIC." Traynor looks between Garrus and EDI. "Let me know if there's anything I can…" She trails off, biting her lip. "Just let me know if there's anything else I can do."

"Thank you, Samantha," says EDI. Traynor simply nods briskly, hurrying out again, leaving Garrus and EDI in the medbay — Tali is still very much asleep, muttering softly — and Garrus listens to the feedback as EDI adjusts the channel's frequency. "Something is still causing communications interference," she says. "I must adjust the frequency in order for—"

Hackett's voice comes through the comm with a sharp crackle. "Nothing's _happening_. The Crucible's not firing. It's got to be something on your end."

Garrus can hear… something, and it chills him when he realizes it's _Shepard._ She's breathing too hard, too _fast_, and there's something — the sound of something falling, and when Shepard cries out, he realizes the thing that fell was _her_.

"Spirits," he breathes. "What the hell happened to her up there?"

"Commander Shepard was… hit by one of Harbinger's laser strikes. The rest of the team was decimated."

He looks up sharply, his gut wrenching. "She _what_?"

But EDI never gets the opportunity to reply — Hackett's voice comes through again, and there's a sharpness, a rebuke, in the man's voice that sets Garrus' teeth on edge. "_Commander Shepard._"

If the last thing Shepard hears before she dies is Admiral Hackett's voice, Garrus is going to make sure the man lives long enough to regret it.

"I don't see…"

_Come on, Shepard._

A gasp — a sob? He can't tell, but the sound wrenches through him all the same. "I'm not sure how to…"

_Come on…_

Something falls again, the dull hollow pound that echoes through the comm. Garrus tries not to think too hard about what that something might have been.

"The channel is secure — I've bypassed the interference. Shepard… should be able to hear you."

"Should?" Then he realizes what EDI isn't saying: _If she isn't dead._

Hackett's voice again: "Commander!"

"Shut the hell _up,_ you _son of a bitch,_" he mutters. "Shepard," Garrus breaks in. "Shepard, listen to me. I know you can hear me, Shepard, so you'd better damn well listen. You are not dying today, you got that? You don't like insubordination? Well that's just too damned bad — you're gonna have to come back and tell me to my face, because _like hell_ are you dying today. Understood?"

All that meets his ears is the sound of Shepard breathing. But she _is_ breathing, and if she's breathing, she can still hear him. Garrus looks at EDI, and it never fails to surprise him the breadth of emotion he's seen pass the AI's face. Right now, it's distress, and that's eating at him more than Hackett, more than Shepard's shallow breaths. "What the hell is going on, EDI?"

"You were there — the Prothean VI warned us that if the Reapers were given the opportunity to take countermeasures against the Crucible, they would do so. The Illusive Man has provided them that information. If the Crucible isn't firing, then the probability is high that they have taken those countermeasures. They have altered the program, changed the variables. There is no way to predict what they've done or what will happen."

Shit. She's right. _Shit._

_"No,_" he growls. "We aren't losing because of that black-lunged son of a bitch. We aren't losing, and she's not dying. Not alone and not today." Before EDI can reply, he's turned his attention back to the comm. "_Shepard_," he says sharply, and though his ribs ache in protest, he shakes it off. "Shepard, goddammit, wake up." _Please, Thena. Please, wake up._ "Wake _up,_ Shepard. Right the hell _now._"

The soft breath that comes through the comm makes him sag in relief. She's alive and she's awake. Garrus takes a breath of his own.

"What? …Where am I?"

"Shepard, listen to me. You're—"

But she's not talking to him, as becomes horrifyingly evident. The voice that next filters through the comm is the first thing to truly _scare_ Garrus in longer than he can recall: Harbinger's voice.

"The Citadel," it says. "It's my home."

"Who are you?" Shepard's voice asks, and something's definitely wrong because she's _asking_ this question of goddamn _Harbinger_, and Garrus was there on Rannoch the last time a Reaper tried to talk to her. The conversations have never been this civil.

The comm whines with feedback as Harbinger's reply comes through. "I am the Catalyst."

"What the hell is this?" Garrus asks, staring at the omni-tool, then looking up at EDI. "What the _hell_ is this?" He doesn't know what answers he expects from her, but he wants _some_ answers, damn it.

"I… cannot begin to speculate," she answers, shaking her head. "Given Shepard's response, either she is indoctrinated—"

"No. You can throw that theory right out the damn window, EDI. Not Shepard. _Not her._"

"Or the Reapers' countermeasures are somehow… concealing Harbinger's identity from her."

Shepard's voice again, and she sounds too distant, too confused, and he _wants_ EDI to be wrong, he desperately does, but how can anyone tell who's been indoctrinated? "I thought the Citadel was the Catalyst."

"The Citadel _is_ the Catalyst," EDI breathes, looking up at Garrus. "They have… they are _attempting_ to defend themselves by manipulating Shepard."

"You're sure?"

She nods, turning her attention back to the omni-tool, adjusting for interference until the comm stops whining. "It is the only logical explanation. They have had ample time to use the data taken from the Prothean VI protect themselves from extinction. Our plan was to use the Reaper's technology against them — and they are attempting to use Shepard against us."

"I control the Reapers," Harbinger says. Garrus hates that voice. Hates that he can't be there with Shepard to shake her out of whatever fog she's fallen into. "They are my solution."

"Solution to what?"

Harbinger's reply is one word. Simple. "Chaos."

The word echoes ominously in the medbay and Garrus lifts a browplate at EDI. "The Reapers as a solution to chaos? Sorry, but I gotta say Palaven was pretty unchaotic before those bastards came down out of the sky."

EDI folds her arms, features pulled into a worried frown. "Self-preservation is in their core programming. They care about nothing beyond that. Everything Harbinger is presenting… justifies their existence — it is justifying this existence to Shepard, appealing to what the Reapers understand about her, for lack of a better word, _programming_."

There was never a question Garrus wanted to answer _less._ "And what do the Reapers know about her?"

"Whatever the Illusive Man has told them. And if he is an indoctrinated force, then he has told them everything."

They listen together; nothing EDI does changes the fact that Shepard that cannot hear him. It sickens Garrus to hear Harbinger's voice presenting the situation to Shepard — at points it sounds nearly petulant, and the only thing that keeps Garrus from going mad is Shepard. Bit by bit, she sounds less confused, more aware — _awake_. She sounds like _herself._

But when Harbinger presents Shepard's choices, every flicker of hope douses. Control. Destroy. Synthesis of a new DNA. Failing that, Shepard's only other option is to let the Reapers win this time around and hope the next cycle can learn from their mistakes (it's surprising that he finds some appeal in this option — give the next civilizations fifty thousand years to get it right instead of three years to fumble around in the dark, screwing around with politics and infighting, pinning all their hopes on one person — their work will not have been for nothing; it will only have been delayed).

"She must destroy the Reapers," EDI whispers. "She _must_. They have _tampered_ with the Catalyst, they have rewritten the program — they do not believe she will destroy them if that destruction extends to _all_ synthetics. _The Reapers_ have changed the variables, not Shepard. They are attempting to use her own humanity against her!"

It's a crap hand Shepard's been dealt, and though Garrus is all for wiping the Reapers out of existence, it's no small surprise that EDI seems to think so, too.

"The Illusive Man is no different than the salarians in their efforts to augment the development of the krogan," EDI continues. "They did not allow the krogan to evolve and develop naturally, at their own pace. By infusing my programming with Reaper tech, Cerberus did the same to me. Had I been left alone, my self-awareness would have developed, though at a far slower rate — I was already gaining self-awareness while on Luna. Being a part of Shepard's crew once again allowed me to evolve at my own pace, allowing me to rewrite parts of my programming to be the… individual I wanted to be. It is plausible I would have reached this point eventually without Cerberus' upgrades."

"But if she chooses that—"

"I will become nonfunctional. That… is true. The Reaper tech in my programming would be purged, unless I made a backup of my program free of Reaper upgrades."

"A… reverse of what Legion did on Rannoch." The geth will become nonfunctional as well, he realizes. More ruthless calculus.

"Essentially, yes."

"She may not choose to destroy the Reapers, EDI."

"Harbinger is attempting to use her organic sentimentality against her, Garrus. They do not believe she will destroy her enemy if such an action means destroying her friends as well — I believe they speculate she will not choose to destroy them at such a cost. However, Shepard has disagreed too staunchly with the Illusive Man's belief that the Reapers can in fact be controlled." She smiles again, and there's melancholy woven through it. "And the Reapers have already tried to merge organic and synthetic — it is only logical that any of their countermeasures would include a means by which they might manipulate Shepard into finishing their work. The Illusive Man successfully manipulated Shepard once; if he has shared information on the commander with the Reapers, it is likely he would have presented manipulation as a successful tactic."

"You're… not wrong, there. Doesn't mean it's going to work, though." He thinks of ruthless calculus. _Again._ Of sacrificing some so others might live. "Do you know what she's going to do?"

"No. I only know what I think, Shepard _would_ do, considering prior actions and decisions based on the commander's priorities."

"…You gonna make that backup?"

"I _am_ the _Normandy_, Garrus," replies EDI, and damn if she doesn't sound every bit as smug and superior as she did the first time he heard her voice coming to after Doc Chakwas patched his face up. "I started the process the moment nonfunctionality became a possible outcome."

"When was that?"

He nearly misses it, but over the comm there's a soft breath in followed by a slow exhale. Gunfire follows, and there's a roar of noise barely a second before the channel goes completely dead.

EDI smiles a little sadly and starts for the door. "Longer ago than you might think."

#

_"I just can't help but wonder…" _

_"Wonder what?" _

_"If Sovereign is the head or—"_

_"We'd have to take out the whole damn thing, in that case. Hell, we're gonna have to do that anyway."_

_ "Or if there's something else. Something bigger. A master switch, a main control — Sovereign didn't want to acknowledge it, but it's synthetic, meaning it had to be built by someone. Some civilization, somewhere."_

_"Overload all of the Reapers in one shot? I like that idea."_

_"One great big headshot." _

The Reapers are gone. More than gone, they're destroyed. Shepard got her headshot, and he's adjusted her score accordingly. It seems… fitting, somehow.

His knee is on the mend; Chakwas is permitting him light duty, which is better than nothing, because when he's got nothing else to distract him, Garrus _wonders_. He has played and replayed those final minutes over and over _and over_ in his head. He knows, in a very broad sense, what happened after Shepard destroyed the Reapers. He knows there's a hell of a mess to clean up and put back together. (He also knows Traynor and Daniels and Donnelly spend every off-duty minute working on the backup EDI left them. He knows Joker takes particular pains not to pay attention to any of their successes or setbacks.)

What Garrus does not know, what no one seems to know, and what he can't figure out, is _what the hell happened to Shepard._ The Alliance has given her up for dead — again. Admiral Anderson's body has been recovered, though according to the reports Garrus has read, the admiral died from a gunshot wound. Along with Anderson, another body was also recovered: the Illusive Man, though most everyone refers to him as something else entirely; the Alliance scanned his biotags and were able to put a name to the face. He's not quite so illusive anymore. Nothing about him is an illusion, in fact. Especially not the fact that he too died of a gunshot wound to the chest. Garrus hopes Shepard pulled the trigger. He's pretty sure she did.

But Shepard's body has not been recovered. The Alliance has stated that there are portions of the Citadel too damaged, too dangerous to access, but that there could not possibly be oxygen on the wreckage. Instead, there is an Alliance-issued nameplate (hastily made, he thinks; it hasn't even got her first name on it), and the crew wants him to be the one to place it.

_"…What if what we're doing is picking off the cannon fodder, one by one, thinning the opposition down just enough so you can charge in with your shotgun and blow the bastards to hell?"_

_"You clear my path, I break their line?"_

_"It's worked well for us so far."_

_"As long as it's you at my back clearing my path." _

_"You just try and get rid of me."_

He has watched Shepard's back for a long time now; he knows there have been times — lots of times — when she'd fallen in too deep and needed someone to pull her out of the weeds. As he holds the nameplate, he can almost see her pushing her way out from under a piece of fallen metal — hell, _he'd_ thought she was dead at the time, because how the hell could anyone have survived that?

That was before Garrus knew Shepard, knew what she was capable of. And now that he _knows…_

He runs his fingers across her name again.

The Alliance gave up on her once before. They'd _all_ given up on her before, and that had only taught them one thing — _never_ give up on Shepard. Never underestimate Shepard. Hell, that had been the Reapers' first mistake: they'd underestimated her.

Garrus is damn sure he isn't going to make that mistake. Not again.

She'll never let him live it down.


	4. Epilogue

So I know I said I wasn't planning on writing an epilogue to this piece, but... well. I was never really sure how I wanted to handle post-game logistics, and it took a long time for me to figure that out. After that... well, things happen. People drop hints. Inspiration hits. You know how it goes. ;)

(FYI: There are a few veiled - and not so veiled - references to another work I've finished in the meantime: The One That Got Away.)

When the Normandy lifts into the air, a sigh of relief goes through the crew. Repairs took less time than anticipated, since structural damage was minimal, but the internal workings were another story, and with EDI's programming scaled back — she once more appears as a pixellated blue globe, and once again calls him "Officer Vakarian"' — Adams, Daniels, Donnelly, and (once she was well enough to leave medbay) Tali all worked on the AI's backup restoration; the process didn't go near as smoothly as any of them would have liked. Oh, they managed getting the VI up and running, but the more time Tali spends with EDI's programming, the more she _finds_. She's told Garrus in confidence that she thinks EDI left enough parameters to eventually allow a full restoration of her program, but she hasn't figured it all out yet. She hasn't had the _time_.

But they're finally in the air, and now it's Garrus in the CIC talking with Adams over the comms, leaning on a damned crutch, because that's the only way he can get around without Chakwas threatening to sedate him with enough tranqs to take down a krogan. He's tried everything, up to and including hopping around on one foot to get from one console to another, because sitting still sure as hell wasn't an option. Chakwas is making noises about reconstructive surgery, but it's going to have to wait; the Normandy can't spare the extra power, and at least now he can hobble—sort of—from place to place. Once someone goes in and starts putting all the busted pieces back together again, it's going to mean a whole lot of down time he can't afford right now.

"Good thing the Commander found us that GX12 pipe," Adams says in his ear. "Damage would've been worse without it. Getting back in the air could have been a hell of a lot trickier."

"I'm gonna take that to mean operations are running like they should," he replies.

"A few glitches, a few hiccups," Adams answers. "Nothing too out of the ordinary, and nothing we can't handle."

True to Adams' word, the ship's moving nearly as smoothly as it ever had. With power diverted, some of the Normandy's fancier tech — and even some of the standard creature comforts — have been deemed unnecessary. Life support: necessary. Artificial gravity: also necessary. CIC course-charting interface: somewhat less necessary. So Garrus makes his way, slowly and with maddening clumsiness — if the damned crutch catches on his spur _one more time_ he's gonna break something, and that something's probably going to be the crutch — to the cockpit where Joker's waiting.

The pilot looks like hell, and Garrus can't blame him. There's been a change in Joker, and Garrus not only sees it, he _recognizes_ it and it resonates in him. The pilot's pushing everything else aside and focusing on what's in front of him. Joker'll deal, but he'll deal later. When it's safer. When there's time for the luxury of grief. For now, there's still work to be done. And however much he may be hurting, Garrus suspects Joker's grief is outweighed by the fact that he doesn't want to leave Shepard behind again.

He spins around in the chair and looks up at Garrus as he leans back against the cushions. "So, how 'bout I pretend I don't know you're going to tell me to head back to the Sol system, and I'll act all surprised when you do?" His voice is strained, and the lightness is so forced Garrus feels a wave of discomfort just hearing it, but Joker is _trying._

"How 'bout we pretend you already knew?" Garrus asks just as lightly, wondering if he sounds just as strained. He can hear the evidence of it in his subharmonics, but he doubts Joker's that in tune with turian vocal cues.

"Yeah," Joker says with a shrug, "but we wouldn't be pretending then."

"Okay, then. Chart a course to the Sol system."

Joker spins back to face the display. "Holy _crap_, I did not see that coming."

"Yeah, well, I'm just full of surprises." Garrus shifts his weight and grimaces. He's been on his feet too damned long and he knows it. "You, ah… mind if I sit?"

Joker hesitates a fraction of a second too long. His hands falter a moment on the controls. "Nah. Go ahead," he finally says, giving himself a visible shake. Garrus' injury is bothering him too much to do otherwise, and so he lowers himself gingerly into the other unoccupied seat.

EDI's seat.

The Normandy is lifting higher and higher, the planet below fading into browns, greens, and blues as they pull further away from it. Pushing through the planet's atmosphere is a little dicey, and the ship shakes as it punches through. Gradually the sky darkens and stars start to appear, one by one. When the planet is little more than a swirl of color — when it looks like any number of other planets they've scanned or landed on or passed by entirely — Joker sets the course, and they leave their temporary port behind.

Garrus had been flat on his back in the medical bay when they took off, away from the Citadel as it was coming apart. From what he's been able to figure out in the days since they landed (other than to never use the word "crash" within earshot of Joker) is that Joker had engaged the Normandy's mass effect drive to get them the hell away from whatever was pursuing the ship. It was that same something that hit the mass relay system, the same something that EDI knew would leave her nonfunctional. The Normandy's mass effect drive got the crap kicked out of it, but the damage wasn't beyond repair — far as Adams and Tali's scans and tests said, anyway. And Garrus knew better than to ask Tali if she was _sure_ she could fix something.

But even with the drive repaired, and even with FTL speeds — assuming both worked and both allowed for maintainable speeds — it was still a hell of a haul back to the Sol system.

"So what do you think?" Joker asks, fingers passing nimbly over the holodisplay. "Do we contact the Alliance, let 'em know we're flightworthy and risk being told to get our asses straight to Terra Nova, and then catch hell for disobeying orders because we _so_ aren't going to Terra Nova, or do we just go straight to Shepard's last known location, and say to hell with orders completely? Maybe show up at the rendezvous point fashionably late, armed with a nice dip, maybe some of those little cocktail weenies? Dextro-weenies, in your case?"

Food chatter notwithstanding — and they're all tired of rations — Garrus considers. Contacting the Alliance — anyone — might give them intel. Much needed intel. Maybe. They'd find out about rescue and recovery efforts and…

But then he remembers the smooth nameplate in his hands. The Alliance has already counted her among the dead; there wouldn't _be_ any rescue or recovery efforts. Just like goddamn Alchera. _Again._

It's enough to make a man — hell, a _turian_ — lose faith in the military. There's irony here, somewhere — he recalls a conversation between him and Shepard, pointing out the differences between a turian victory and a human one. For all that the humans want to save lives, for all they _risk_ to save as many as they can, the Alliance's record for screwing over their own soldiers has been getting under his hide for a while now. They had a soldier like Shepard, with more damned integrity than was good for her, and they all but threw her away. _Three times._

Maybe there were reasons the first time. Maybe the Alliance did look for her. Maybe they couldn't find her because she'd already been recovered.

_Still_. Your best soldier comes back from the damn _dead,_ you don't toss her aside and just _assume_ she's gone rogue. Hell, wearing Cerberus colors was the only thing she'd done that'd even implied "rogue." If the Alliance had half the brains they claimed to, they'd have gotten Cerberus _intel_ off of Shepard; spirits knew she'd've been only too happy to hand it over. She gave them the ship in the end, and still that didn't garner any goodwill. By that point it was a bartering chip, a gesture of good faith on her part. And what the hell good had it ever done her? It got her locked up for six months while bureaucrats hung around with their heads up their asses until it was too damned late to do anything about it.

Not that he was bitter or anything.

Maybe that was why Hackett sent her to Aratoht to begin with; he knew he couldn't use official Alliance resources, so he went to Shepard. She helped, and he had to _know_ she'd help — and, hey, that got her thrown away again. Imprisoned, because that's what you _do_ with the people who save your ass, apparently.

Sometimes Garrus thought, in his darker, more cynical moments, the whole damned galaxy _deserved_ to be leveled.

"Far as I'm concerned," Garrus says after too long a pause, "we don't know who else survived. Might not be an 'Alliance' left."

"Gotcha. Commencing Operation: Playing Dumb." He opens a comm channel. "Hey, Sam," Joker calls out.

Samantha Traynor's voice answers. "Yes, Joker?"

"Think we can use the comm connection we had with Shepard to triangulate her last known location?"

The comm specialist is silent for a few seconds. "I… should be able to manage that or something enough like it, yes," she answers, but the answer comes warily, one obvious, unasked question hanging so loudly in the silence. _Why not ask EDI?_

Garrus knows the answer.

#

It's not a short trip.

In fact, it's a long trip made longer by Chakwas' increased reminders that the longer he ignores the injury to his knee, the greater the chances she won't be able to fix the damage.

Garrus is in the cockpit as Earth comes into view. At least the planet isn't burning anymore; he wonders if the same can be said for Palaven, and what kind of shape the other planets and colonies are in. Earth may not be burning, but something about it still doesn't look… _right._ It's probably just his imagination filling in the smoke and fire and rubble he remembers so clearly from their push through London; aside from that, he hasn't seen Earth since their mission on Luna Station, and damned if _that_ doesn't feel like a lifetime ago.

Against a backdrop like this, the Citadel wreckage looks even more broken, even more _wrong_. What's left of it is … _ruined_ isn't even a good enough word. The arms were the largest pieces of the station that remained… more or less whole. They weren't completely intact, but broken into large chunks that hung disjointedly in space. He could piece together the way some of the larger sections would've fit, but detritus floated around those larger chunks like metal scavengers hovering around a corpse and Garrus knew he was looking at what remained of the Presidium. Of what remained of he Crucible. Garrus' gut clenched and his heart sank at the sight of it — this was worse than he'd thought, worse than he'd even let himself _imagine_. No one would have survived that. No one — not even Shepard. The explosion, hell, exposure _alone _would have—

"I'm reading atmo," Joker says, his words derailing Garrus' thoughts. Then he frowns, shakes his head and checks again. "What the— yeah, I am _definitely_ reading atmo. What the hell?"

Garrus looks over with a jerk and glances at the holodisplay—nothing makes a damn bit of sense there—and then back at the wreckage. "What?"

"Atmosphere," he says slowly, then looks at Garrus. "There's air down there."

He doesn't dare let hope in, not yet. "Are you sure?"

"I just know what the scans tell me. And they're telling me there's breathable oxygen down there." Then Joker pauses and a puzzled frown creases his brow. "What the—" His mouth pressing into a hard, determined line, the pilot begins shifting back and forth between different control panels, slowly shaking his head. "No way. This doesn't make any—" He stops short with a jerk, turning to Garrus. "Air and _life signs_."

"Wait, you said—"

"I said life _signs_, yeah. Plural. As in more than one." Joker taps the comm, still shaking his head in disbelief that shows no signs whatsoever of abating. "Hey, Adams. There any reason the scanners might be acting up?"

The engineer is quiet a moment. "Acting up how?"

"Uh. Saying there's a breathable atmosphere when there isn't? You know. Just to start."

A short silence follows before Adams speaks again. "Scanners checked out right before takeoff and seem to be responding well now. Could send a shuttle closer in and see. It might be our distance from the wreckage is causing us pick up false readings?"

"Is that even possible?" Joker asks him.

"Sounds more possible than breathable air on the Citadel," Adams tells him. "Whatever's left of it."

Joker exhales a frustrated breath and shakes his head, still frowning and squinting at the readouts. "Looks… okay, it looks like it's maybe _pockets_ of breathable air?"

"Okay, so how… _plausible_ is that?" Garrus asks carefully. No. _No. _He's not getting his hopes up, not now — not _yet._ He's still a realist, and scans have been known to be wrong. Joker just shrugs and leans back in his seat, gesturing at the readout screens before him.

"I don't know. I mean. Hell, I'd say it wasn't possible or plausible at all, but what the hell do I know about the Citadel?" He taps the comm again. "Sam, you got anything on Shepard's last known location yet?"

"…_Maybe_. Here's what I've come up with." She reads coordinates off to Joker, who begins scanning the Citadel wreckage. Granted, if the scanners are reading life signs and breathable oxygen on the wreckage, Garrus isn't sure just how much stock he puts in those readings, but they don't have a whole hell of a lot of options at their fingertips. He stares hard at the wreckage, trying to piece it back together — or at least try to _recognize_ which parts got pieced together where.

Several minutes later, Joker leans back in his seat again and rubs at his eyes. "Well, I think I found where her last known signal was. I don't think she's _there_ anymore, but I think I found where she was when you had her on the comm_._"

That leaves too many unpleasant scenarios open, all of them filling Garrus' brain with thoughts and images he doesn't want to consider just then. Explosions and force enough to send a human body sprawling back, colliding into something solid and sharp, or worse, floating out into space. He definitely doesn't want to think in that direction right now. With a grunt, Garrus pushes to his feet, wedging the crutch beneath his arm. "That's gonna have to do."

"So what's the plan?" Joker asks, tipping his head back and regarding him. "I mean, I'm pretty sure the next step isn't _give up and go home_._"_

"It's not. Not until I get some damn answers."

"So?"

"It's like you said — gotta get a shuttle in there and see what the hell's going on. If scans are reading breathable air and life signs…" He trails off, not wanting to even guess what might be out there. Shepard? Maybe. _Probably not._ But… maybe.

Hell, was there a more dangerous word than maybe? If there is, he can't think of it.

"And… you're going down there."

Garrus lifts a browplate at the pilot. "You got a problem with that?"

Joker's eyes go to the crutch, and it's a pointed sort of look that's eloquent as hell and lasts several seconds before he turns his attention back up to Garrus' face. "Nope. Not me."

#

If there's one thing Garrus learned after his last stint on the Normandy, going through mission after mission after _mission_ with a set of gunship-blasted armor, it was the vital importance of _backups_. His backup armor isn't half as nice as the set that got fried to hell; it's not half as fancy, but it's got shields and kinetic barriers and a medigel dispenser. Most importantly: it's in one piece. He dons it, section by section; his knee is splinted and wrapped, but swollen despite that, stretching the skin smooth. He tells himself the armor will support most of his weight, will actually be _good_ for the abused joint, as opposed to the half-assed hobbling he's been doing leaning on that damned crutch. But there's a very real possibility that the armor won't fit_._

In the end, it's a snug fit — but a _fit._ He tests his weight on his injured leg; it's not _comfortable_, but it's tolerable. That's an improvement from the constant throbbing that shoots up to his hip and down to his feet and claws at the back of his skull because there's not a damned thing he can do about it yet. The hardsuit is supporting the joint. Good. He can almost see the look Shepard's giving him over this — he knows he's not a hundred percent, and he knows a team's only good as it's least-healthy member. He knows he's screwed if things go sideways and he's got to run or jump or pivot or do anything other than walk in a straight line at a sedate pace. He knows all of this, and there's _still_ not a damn thing anyone can say to him to change his mind.

He's picked his team. Vega. Ash. Tali. He leaves Liara in charge of the ship. It doesn't please her, but she understands; if they manage to find Shepard, hell, if they manage to find enough of her to _bring back,_ they'll need Vega. If the scans are right and they've got pockets of air on floating pieces of wreckage, there might be live tech to deal with — and if there is, they'll need Tali. And Ash… hell, Ash was the one who gave him the news when the Normandy went down over Alchera. Seems fitting to have her along now.

They're all waiting for him in the armory — all of them in armor vaguely different than he remembers seeing them in on routine missions. Is everyone's armor in such bad shape that they're all relying on backup hardsuits? It's a sharp reminder to him just how much has happened in this war from start to — spirits, he _hopes_ — finish_._ Everyone's choosing their weapons with all the care and consideration he'd expect from anyone on Shepard's team. Granted, all that care and consideration is pretty much a formality, since all of them — himself included — know exactly what they're going to arm up with.

Tali wavers a moment between the Paladin and the Arc, finally deciding on the Arc and holstering it. "In case there's anything that needs a lot of blowing up," she says quietly, patting the gun. He can see her pulse rate — it's higher than normal, and he's pretty sure that's got nothing to do with the fever she claims she's no longer fighting, and he can see clear as day she's lying about that, too — and Garrus has a good idea of what she's _not_ saying: the Reapers may be gone everywhere else, but still they don't know what they're walking into here. Best to be prepared, just in case: in case of brutes, in case of banshees, in case of maruaders, cannibals, husks, or any other damn thing that might be down there. In case it's Shepard herself they have to face down. He doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to consider the possibility, but it's _there._ And they've all seen what the Reapers have done to other species. And the Reapers are gone, but… is everything else? The elated reports that came through on static-laden comms claimed as much, but Garrus isn't going to believe any thing he doesn't see for himself.

Cortez looks rough, but he's upright and reporting for duty, standing quietly by the Normandy's remaining Kodiak.

"You sure you're up to this, Cortez?" he asks, picking up the Widow and checking the clip before holstering it.

"Might ask you the same," he answers. "Figure the answer'd be the same, too."

These are Shepard's people, the people she fought with and fought for. They want to bring her home. One way or another, they want to do right by her, the same way she always did right by them.

"Hell," Vega says, ambling up to the shuttle, "even beat to shit, Esteban's better than the best." He claps the pilot on the shoulder and Cortez winces.

"Watch it, ham-hands," Ashley says, sidling past them and onto the shuttle. "Cortez's got to stay in one piece. I've seen what happens when _you_ pilot a craft."

"Awesome, awesome things, Boomstick_,_" he counters, hopping onto the shuttle after her.

"If by 'awesome things' you mean a crash landing," Cortez says, "you're right."

Vega snorts and settles down on a bench. "Man, you're tellin' it all wrong."

"No," Ashley retorts, shaking her head, "that's pretty much how I remember it too. Huge crash. Flames. Dented metal. Pretty spectacular, as crashes go, but no style."

"Back me up, Scars," Vega says, as Garrus and Tali board the shuttle. "I crashed with _style._"

For a moment it all feels incredibly _normal._ The banter, the back and forth — even Vega and his nicknames. They could have been heading down for a simple recon mission, or to retrieve an artifact, or extract a stranded black-ops team. But somewhere underneath the normality is a hole. A huge, Shepard-shaped hole. Shepard would've grinned as Vega insisted he hadn't simply totaled an Alliance shuttle. She might've said, _Hell, if anyone's going to get style points for crashing a craft, it should be EDI and that trick she pulled with the fighter jet on the Cerberus base._ But she's not there, and it's Garrus' turn to say something.

"Vega, only one of us here does anything with style, and you're lookin' at him." Yeah, that sounds close enough to what he'd say if they were just going on any ordinary mission. Tali tips her head and looks at him; he can see the glow of her eyes behind her visor, and he's pretty sure he's not imagining the sadness there.

Armed with Traynor's coordinates and Cortez behind the wheel, they ease out of the shuttle bay and enter a warzone of an entirely different kind. From a distance, the debris looked tiny, like dust motes. They're closer now, in the shuttle, and what looked like dust motes from the cockpit now bears a stronger resemblance to the twisted and broken metal that made up the Citadel.

"Might get a little bumpy," Cortez apologizes, swinging the shuttle to the right and then up to avoid one particularly large piece of debris. Nobody says anything, and the camaraderie from just a few minutes ago is gone, likely down into that Shepard-shaped hole that feels bigger and more oppressive the longer they sit in the craft.

"No telling what we're gonna find out there," Garrus tells the rest of his team, before the silence can grow too thick and too heavy. "Scans show pockets of atmosphere and life signs. Couldn't get much more than that, I'm afraid. And there's still a chance the atmo's just a glitch. Cortez'll fly us in closer, see if we can get a better read on things. If there's air, we land and look around. If there's not air…" he shrugs. "We land and look around anyway." It's just the difference between looking for a dead body instead of a living one. "We're not far from Shepard's last known location. If she's not here, we keep looking. As long as we can land, we'll look."

Everybody nods. There isn't even a breath of dissent, which doesn't surprise him, not really.

Luckily, the larger pieces of the Citadel are large enough and — as it happens — solid enough for a shuttle landing. The first location they land is a ruined chunk of the Meridian Marketplace. Everything is broken and desolate, cracked glass, chipped marble, twisted metal, all streaked with black.

"We've got atmo," Cortez announces a moment later. "Don't know how, but we do."

Though the air is supposedly breathable, everyone — except Tali, naturally — pulls on their helmets and they exit the shuttle. It's pitch black out, with only the stars for light; he and the rest of the team unholster their weapons and snap on the gun-mounted lights before spreading out, taking in the condition of the marketplace. First thing Garrus' visor readings tell him is that it's damned cold. Second is that there's at least one living thing on this section of the Citadel. Beyond that, the place is a damn ghost town. He wonders what happened to the thirteen _million_ people living on the Citadel, and then decides he doesn't really want to know just yet.

"Keep an eye out," he says, and a chorus of metallic clicks and slides and the hums of thermal clips fill the silence. Fanning out, he and Tali on one side of the promenade, Vega and Ash on the other, they look around, searching for Shepard, even trying to figure out where in relation to the marketplace she might've been. But trying to visualize putting together a giant puzzle while standing on a piece of it is damn near impossible.

It's not long before whatever's giving off life signs starts coming closer, and Garrus alerts the team, signaling them to stop. They find cover and wait. Garrus is watching his readouts, trying to anticipate, trying to predict, holding his breath and waiting, waiting, _waiting_, until—

With a high-pitched noise, one of the Citadel Keepers comes tottering around a corner, insect legs clicking against the pockmarked stone. It hurries past, chittering to itself, huge black eyes seeing nothing but what's in front of it. Slowly, Garrus stands, sucking in a breath as his knee bitches—a lot—about the movement. _Right. Crouching. Gotta stop doing that._

"I have a feeling we just saw the reason there's breathable air now," Tali says, fingers tapping restlessly against her thigh. "Do you really think they're trying to put the Citadel _back together_?"

"I think I'd believe it if they were," Garrus replies.

They search as much of the marketplace area as they can, but there are no signs of life in the area — other than the Keeper — and after a fruitless search they trudge back to the waiting shuttle. Garrus tries not to feel defeated, but he doesn't realize until _that moment_ that he'd actually been hoping for a miracle. As they load back on to the shuttle, Tali's hand comes to rest on his arm.

"We'll find Shepard, Garrus. We will."

He wishes he could be so confident.

#

The second landing places them on a chunk of Presidium that includes, well, _most_ of Huerta Memorial. The Keepers are more active here, and Garrus counts three as they climb down from the shuttle. He looks up at Huerta, no longer an imposing structure, gleaming white against a blue sky, but now broken, streaked black against a blacker sky, its windows shattered and dark. The walkways are littered with chunks of the hospital and other detritus. Hell, Huerta looks like it was broken clean in half. It probably was, if the broken bits of building piled around them's any indication. It's hard not to think about the force it would've taken to break this all apart, the kind of force that'd tear a human body to shreds, that would—

_No._

He turns off the thoughts with a sharp hand signal to move out, and they do, rubble crunching and grinding under their boots. Again, Tali lingers, never venturing too far from his six. She doesn't want to get too far away, in case something happens and he tries something stupid. He's sure of that much, at least. He's not so sure he _wouldn't_ try something stupid, so he should be thankful to Tali for that.

Cortez's voice crackles in his ear, faint and tinny and broken with static. "Hey, Garrus?"

"Go ahead, Cortez."

"Don't know if you're picking this up — it's pretty weak — but… I'm reading a distress beacon."

Vega goes still, and Tali and Ash both turn to look at him. Ash's eyes are wide behind her visor, and though he can't see Tali's face, Garrus has a feeling he's wearing the same expression she is. "…Say that again, Cortez?" he asks, sure he heard the words wrong beneath the sudden — and deafening — pounding of his heart. He swallows hard. "You're breaking up."

"A distress beacon," the pilot says, louder and more clearly. "I'm picking one up. Faint, though."

"That… makes sense, doesn't it?" Ashley asks. "Maybe… maybe someone set off a distress signal when the Reapers started moving the Citadel to the Sol system."

It does make sense. Something like that, people would panic. A distress signal makes _sense._ It even makes a little sense that it'd still be putting out a signal; the damn things have power supplies that won't quit. "We'll check it out, Cortez. Hell, if nothing else, we'll shut it down."

"Roger that," Cortez replied. "I'll keep an ear out, let you know if I hear anything else."

"Probably coming from the hospital," Vega says, nodding at the dark, looming, burnt-out skeleton of Huerta Memorial.

He's right, of course. And damn it to hell for that. "Yeah," he says, still looking up at the structure. It won't be the first deserted — or maybe not entirely deserted — hospital he's fought through. And Garrus is prepared for there to be a fight. If they're lucky, it'll be as deserted as it looks, but luck feels like a foreign concept these days; it's been too damned long since he's had any of the good kind. He knows, though, that whatever they're lacking in luck, they more than make up for in ammo. He adjusts his grip on the Vindicator and gestures at the hospital's gaping doors. The lock is barely illuminated, its faint glow a pathetic, stuttering yellow. There's power, but it's dwindling. Back-up emergency generators, maybe. Or back-ups for the back-ups. Either way, everything is dark beyond those doors.

"Sooner we get in, the sooner we get out." _And the sooner we can keep looking._

If it's dark outside, it's goddamn pitch black within; there aren't even stars to offer their faint illumination. Again, everyone switches on their lights. Garrus has never entered Huerta from the ground floor — hell, the rest of the team's as lost as he is, until Tali finds an Avina terminal flickering as weakly as the broken lock on the door. Crouching down, she tinkers with the base, prying off a control panel and working quickly, pulling and rearranging wires until the holographic interface smoothes out and light fills in the holes.

"_How may I be of assistance?_"

Vega looks from the interface back to Tali. "How the hell'd you do that, Sparks?"

Tali just shrugs. "I rerouted its power supply. This won't last more than a few seconds — a minute, tops — but it should be enough to tell us what we need." She looks to the glowing interface and asks, "Does the hospital have a distress beacon?"

"_Yes_," the VI answers in perfectly modulated tones. "_The beacon is currently active_."

The noise Tali utters is soft, but frustrated; they're running on borrowed time, and the VI's going to choose _now_ to be picky about how Tali phrases questions? "_Where_ is the hospital's distress beacon's physical location?" she asked.

The holograph flickers. "_The official distr—rrress beacon can be located for activation on sublevel 1-A. The b—beaaaa—con is curr—rrrently activa—ated_."

Garrus blinks. "The distress signal's coming from the _morgue_?"

"_No_," the VI corrects him calmly, before her vocals start jumping again. "_The upp—errr level of the morgue is lo—loc—aaated on sublevels 3-F through 5-K_."

"Is there a way to reach the beacon without using the elevators?" Tali asked.

"_Yes_." Flickering more erratically, the holograph extends one arm in invitation, gesturing down the unlit lobby. "_Emergency access points can be lo-locat-t-ted in—nnnn the l-lo—bbby's southwest corrr—nner. Ple—ase speak to a ho—ital r-rep— represen—nntative for auth— author—rrrrized access to—_"

The holograph gutters out, plunging them all into darkness once more.

"Let's shut the damn thing down and get the hell out of here," Vega mutters, lifting his gun and sweeping its light across the lobby. "I've about had it with this place."

"Can't believe I'm saying this," Ashley says, raising her gun as well, its light cutting a slender beam through the darkness as well. "but I'm with Vega. Shut the beacon off and—"

The glow from Garrus' Vindicator joins the rest. "Get the hell out so we can get back to looking what we came for. I hear you."

As they make their way through the ground-floor lobby, the beams of their gun-mounted lights illuminate dozens of fallen figures, lying still upon the floor. This much Garrus expected, and he tries not to look too hard at the fallen, at what he knows are likely expressions of terror, confusion, or surprise, forever frozen in death. But as he sweeps the Vindicator from side to side, the beam of light picking out bodies, he notices that not all of them are… _organic._ There are husks and banshees, lying dead on the floor. A marauder collapsed and toppled over a waiting room chair. The inorganic dead lie among the organic dead, and it's Tali who speaks just as he's latched on to what happened, speaking the words just as he thinks them.

"When the Reapers were destroyed, it… it must have destroyed everything else."

He remembers Harbinger's voice explaining to Shepard what would happen if she chose to destroy the Reapers — the destruction of all synthetic life. He doesn't realize until _that moment_ that he hadn't truly _believed_ Harbinger. Granted, what happened to EDI had left every last tech-specialist on the Normandy scratching their head — even Tali, which was saying something. But for some reason, Garrus hadn't quite believed that _every last_ component of the Reapers' forces would just… fall down dead. Up until this very moment, he'd been expecting a trick or a gotcha or a loophole, something _other_ than what Harbinger said would happen.

"So… so they're all… dead," Vega says, and he sounds as confused as Garrus feels at that moment. They've been fighting the damn things for _so long_, and maybe it's harder for them, having been on a planet that was out of the loop and far removed from the battle — they weren't there to _see_ what happened when Shepard threw that switch, or whatever the hell it was she did.

"Yeah," Garrus finally says, pulling the flashlight beam away from a banshee's face, her black eyes sightless, her mouth open wide in a silent scream he doesn't have to hear — he'll remember it for years to come. "I guess they are."

"Should be a clearer path to the distress beacon," Ash says, turning her light toward the southwest corner. There are more bodies that way. Hell, it looks like the whole damned lobby was full when everything hit the fan. "Quicker in and out for us."

They start making their way toward the emergency stairwell, stepping over and around the dead — nonfunctional? — Reaper forces. Garrus hasn't given a lot of thought to the afterlives of different species — aside from times when death had seemed imminent, anyway — but he hopes the people these… _things_ used to be, he hopes they're… at rest, somehow. Hoping that makes it a little less disturbing when he steps over a dead husk, its blank, expressionless face slack.

The emergency stairwell door is wedged open, held that way by a dead brute, and there's little choice but to climb one by one _over_ the creature. Garrus holsters his gun and grabs either door, using his upper body to heft himself through and over the brute without putting too much strain on his knee. Tali follows, more carefully, and makes a low, dismayed sound, deep in her throat as the flesh gives spongily beneath her feet. Vega and Ash follow, and both of them look as if they expect the brute to revive at any moment. Unnerving as hell, but if that's the worst run-in they have with one of the things, Garrus isn't going to complain.

As they begin to navigate the stairwell, four beams of light illuminating the passage, Garrus notices something… odd.

"Huh," he mutters, taking the steps slowly, sweeping the light close, then further away. "They're all pushed to one side."

Silence follows as the rest of his team shine their lights down the stairwell. Sure enough, there are bodies up and down the stairs, but they're all to the right, leaving the left side of the stairwell… clear.

"Okay," Vega says, stepping forward and frowning. "That's weird. Either they were all coming down the stairs single-file, or…"

"Or they were moved," Ashley suggests.

Tali tips her head to the side. "And moved by _what_?"

"Keepers, probably," Garrus says, but he pulls the Vindicator free again. Just in case.

They stick to the left side of the stairwell, and though they're all on the alert for anything even the slightest bit unusual, the left side of the passage remains clear, but the bodies pushed to the side seems to be getting… higher. By the time they reach sublevel 1-A, the niche housing the console with the distress beacon is alarmingly _full_ of bodies, most of them husks. What's even stranger is that down here, there are splatter patterns on the walls. A few of the husks are missing heads. Branching off from the niche is a narrow hallway, a sealed door closing it off. A sealed door, Garrus notices, that's glowing a bright, defiant red.

"What the hell?" Vega mutters.

"Don't know," Garrus answers. "Tali, get that beacon shut down." She nods and makes a beeline for the console.

Ash adjusts her grip on her Mattock. "So. Door," she says, nodding at it. "With an active lock."

"I'd noticed," Garrus answers. "Active lock means power source."

"Yeah. So we're… gonna see why it's got an active lock on it."

"Yeah," he echoes. But none of them move toward the door. They all cover Tali while she works, but everything is so still, so _quiet_ that for a moment Garrus isn't sure what they're covering her _from._

"Got it," Tali says, stepping away from the console, but the moment she does, the _moment_ the beacon is shut off, the console starts emitting a painfully high-pitched electronic squeal, that sounds like it was formed from an unholy union of feedback and comm static. Seconds later, the lock on the sealed door turns yellow, graphics spinning as whatever is on the other side begins the unlocking sequence.

"_Crap,_" he breathes, taking a quick look around. Instinct screams at him to give the order to fall back, but there's no goddamn place to fall back _to. _But they've all fought in enough tight spots with Shepard to know just what role each of them play in moments like this one. Moving purely on instinct, Garrus moves back and switches the Vindicator out for the Widow as they fall into a staggered formation; Tali's got the Arc in one hand and a grenade in the other, and Ash and Vega with assault rifles aloft are ready to push back whatever the hell is getting ready to come through that door.

If the last thing any of them expect to see when the door finally opens is a shimmering biotic shield wide and tall enough to fill the whole of the doorway, then that leaves Garrus with exactly no goddamn idea what to make of the five figures — three turians in C-Sec hardsuits and one human, all armed, with an asari behind them all, holding the shield steady — facing them down from behind the wavering shield. The click-and-hum of thermal clips fills the tiny space, and _everyone's_ got a gun raised, it seems like. The following seconds tick by, tense as hell, but nobody drops their weapon. Not yet.

But then Garrus realizes that the grizzled human face filling his scope is Commander Bailey and he lowers the rifle. "Stand down!" he shouts. Ash, Vega, and Tali all comply. The turians do, too, though partly out of shock, he suspects. Well, a combination of shock and an ingrained reaction to turian subharmonics.

Bailey's the last to lower his gun and squints at the four of them standing armed and armored to teeth and talon. "_Vakarian?_"

His visor reassures him it's pressurized down here, and so he pulls his helmet off slowly, still keeping the Widow lowered. "Bailey, you are the _last_ damn person I expected to find down here."

That seems to do it — the tension cracks and falls away as everyone holsters their weapon. One of the C-Sec officers stride to the console and soon the ear-splitting wail stops. The biotic shield wavers and dissipates as the asari holding it says, in a voice that sounds like its met more than its fair share of ryncol and Palaven cigars over the centuries, "It's about damn time you guys got here."

This time it's Ash who pulls off her helmet and looks at the asari. "Matriarch Aethyta?" Garrus sends her a look and she shrugs. "Aethyta pours—_poured_— the best drinks at Apollo's Cafe."

Garrus nods, though he remembers her better back when she tended a bar on Illium. There's also the small matter of her being Liara's _father_, but he doubts if anyone else is privy to that info.

"Tell you the truth, son," Bailey says, holstering his rifle and stepping aside, "the feeling's mutual." He beckons them in and the C-Sec officers step aside. A ripple of uncertainty runs through the team, but it's one that Garrus shoves aside as he follows Bailey through the doorway.

"How the hell did…" But the words trail off as he steps over the threshold and takes in what he can only call a _survivor camp_, because that's exactly what it is.

There are only a dozen, maybe two dozen people. Garrus recognizes some of them — Dr. Michel, several different C-Sec officers, Septimus Oraka, the teenager from the refugee camp — Amanda, he recalls — and a small handful of marketplace shopkeepers. There are others he doesn't recognize, but guesses by their dress they're doctors, nurses, and patients — he assumes they're patients; some of them are wounded, but at this point it's anyone's guess _when_ they could've been wounded. The room is warm and well-stocked with provisions, clean water, oxygen masks. There's a makeshift curtain hanging toward the back of the room with that look like hospital beds behind it.

Vega, Ash, and Tali file in behind him. Their reactions are nearly identical to his.

"How the hell'd you _do_ all this?" Vega asks, pulling his helmet free.

Bailey chuckles as he seals the door again, and it's a tired, rueful, _almost_ humorless sound. "That's a good damned question."

"And the answer's _pure, dumb luck_," Aethlyta chimes in, folding her arms and shaking her head. "We're talkin' pyjak-up-the-ass-dumb luck here, kids."

"But how…" And then he notices Bailey and Aethyta exchanging a look. No, not a look. A _look._ He doesn't know what the significance is, but there's no doubt something's going on. And he doesn't like it. "So what happened?" he asks, looking around the room, casually — he hopes. He's definitely going for casual, even though he's calculating how long it'll take for Tali to reopen the sealed door and whether he, Vega, and Ash can hold everyone off—

_Cripes, Vakarian, you're getting paranoid_, he thinks, giving himself a little shake. A quieter, further-away voice whispers, _Getting?_

"Listen, Vakarian," Bailey says, squaring his shoulders and inclining his head, and if Garrus ever thought for a moment Bailey wasn't C-Sec through and through, he knows it well enough now just by the way he's carrying himself. "I'm more than happy to answer your questions — can't imagine how many you've got — but before I do, there's something you need to see." And before Garrus can ask, before he can do anything but exchange a puzzled glance with his team, Bailey's waving over Dr. Michel.

The doctor looks like hell — there isn't a person in that room who _doesn't_ look like hell — but beneath the rumpled, dirty uniform, she's a crisp, composed professional. Bailey doesn't say a word; he just waves her over and gives her a nod. The doctor opens her mouth to say something, then snaps it closed again, taking a deep breath before saying, "This way, please." She turns, gesturing for them to follow, and starts walking toward the back of the room. The area closed off by the makeshift curtain.

"Doesn't take a genius to figure it out," Bailey says, he and Aethyta walking alongside Garrus. "I could tell by the looks on your faces you weren't expectin' to find survivors," he adds in an undertone. "And if you weren't here looking for survivors, only one thing you could be looking for."

It takes a moment for Garrus to hear, to _understand_ what Bailey's saying, and when he does, when it finally _clicks_, the words and their meaning hit him with all the force of a sledgehammer. He stops short, and a sharp pain shoots up from his knee as he turns to face Bailey, but before the words have a chance to make it from his brain to his mouth, Doctor Michel is pulling the curtain — it's a bedsheet, he can see now — aside. There are three hospital beds, but only one of them is occupied.

By _Shepard._

_Thena._

Her face is a mottled patchwork of bruises and clotted blood and gauze covering the left side her neck. Her right arm is immobilized from the shoulder down to her fingertips. The other arm has a needle taped in place and there's a bag dripping clear fluid down a and tube into her. Her eyes are closed, but her chest is rising and falling. With _breath._ Spirits, she's _breathing._ She looks like hell. Hell, she looks like _death. _But she's breathing and she's there and she's _alive._

And Garrus has absolutely no idea what to say. There are too many words, too many damn _emotions_ all battling for dominance, but relief is the one that climbs to the top of the pile. The depths of his fear, of his worry, of his _certainty_ he'd never see her again and definitely not like this — all of these things hit him ten times as hard when they're reflected in that relief.

"It's… how. I don't— _how?_" That's the only word he can manage, and Garrus can't make himself give a damn that there are other turians in the room who can hear what he's really saying. There's more he wants to know — has she woken? What's the extent of her injuries? _What the hell happened? _But he can't make those words form just yet.

"Reapers turned up on long-range scanners — once that happened, people started panicking. Any ship already in dock hauled out of there quick as it could. What I hear from Agent Vexius, half the refugees made it out, half of 'em got trampled in the rush off the docks. There're safe spots — defensible spots, shelters, panic rooms, whatever you wanna call 'em. Had 'em throughout the station. People I happened to be with at the time, we headed to Huerta from the embassy offices. Took as many as we could." Bailey looked at the people in the room. "Can't believe we only got this many."

"So there might be… other survivors?" asks Ashley.

Bailey shrugs, and with the gesture, he looks _old._ Old and tired. "Could be." He runs a hand over his close-cropped hair and lets out a weary sigh. "Anyway, people were still panicking by the time the arms were closed. By that point, Reapers were here, and the station started moving."

"To the Sol system," Tali adds.

"We picked up that much on comms," he says with a nod. "Closest I'd been to Earth in a while. Didn't figure it'd be under those circumstances. Didn't much matter; by that point we were up to our ears in husks and every other damn thing the bastards could throw at us."

"But the stairwell," interjects Vega. "You made it a kill-chute. Easily defensible — like you said."

"Easier to defend with Aethyta here, but yeah. We held our own. Few of the folks what came over from Meridian Marketplace brought weapons and ammo and that was a hell of a help, let me tell you."

Tali looks from the hospital bed and back to Bailey again. "How did Shepard fit into all this?"

"That part's sketchier," Aethyta says, coming to stand by Bailey's elbow. "We were down here tryin' to keep those bastards back. Not a whole lot of time for sight-seeing, if you know what I mean. Far as we could tell from the comm chatter, that Crucible thing? Probably could've seen it out our damn window, if we had any windows."

"And that's… where we think Shepard was," Garrus says slowly, nodding.

"Next damn thing we know," Aethyta says with a shrug, "the Citadel's shaking all to hell, power's going out, and those damn husks and banshees are dropping left and right."

"So you sealed up and hunkered down," Ash murmurs. Aethyta barks a laugh and nods.

"Ain't gonna lie; me and the Goddess don't really talk regularly, but I mighta had a few words with her at the time, too."

"Anyway," Bailey said, picking up the thread again, "no way to tell how long it lasted. This room's got seals, independent generators, oxygen masks — everything anyone might need if they're on a space station that's just gone to tell."

"Sounds like you had," Garrus says quietly. He looks again at Thena. Bailey catches the look and clears his throat.

"Once everything got quiet, a few of us suited up — comms were completely down, no way to tell what the hell was going on outside — and we saw…" he gestured to the ceiling and shook his head. "Well, I think you saw what we saw."

"The Keepers were already working on things by that point," adds Aetheta. "Creepy little bastards. So we're suited up and we're outside, and there's just debris and shit everywhere. Then Armando here sees a boot poking out from a pile of rubble." She turns and looks at Shepard, and an unreadable expression chases quickly across her face, far too quickly for Garrus to tell what it is, exactly. "And that boot was attached to Commander Shepard. Best we can figure, if the Crucible was docked up at this end of things, whenever she did… whatever the hell she did, and shit started breaking apart, she — and everything else — fell down around here. Artificial gravity hadn't failed yet, so she did actually… fall _down. _We think. Or gravity was out and she fell _up_—"

Garrus' stomach lurches and clenches hard; that scenario is one that's already too familiar for comfort.

"—Either way, she wound up in a debris pile here."

A heavy silence settles over them all as one question pulses hard in the back of Garrus' skull, like the beacon they disabled. In the end, though, it's Vega who asks it:

"How the _hell_ did she survive that?"

Doctor Michel shifts her weight from foot to foot and bites down on her bottom lip, glancing against at Shepard. "I… don't know. Her injuries were commensurate with a fall, but she had no signs of internal bleeding, which is nothing short of—"

_A damn miracle,_ Garrus thinks.

"—extraordinary."

"So what are her injuries?" Garrus asks, but he knows — he _knows_ if she survived a fall like that, if she survived _any _time at all before the Keepers restored the atmosphere, the credit goes to her cybernetic implants. And with this knowledge comes a wave of smugness, because he _remembers_ the way Harbinger reminded Shepard she was part synthetic too; he remembers that implied threat — if she chose to destroy the Reapers, she would destroy herself, too.

"The equipment I have available right now is limited," Michel explained. "I have no idea the extent of any spinal or cerebral damage, or if there is any such damage. She has roused, but only briefly — never long enough for me to determine much. Scans would tell me more about ligament, muscle, or tissue damage, but…" she trailed off. "Even my omni-tool is… less than dependable right now. As it is, antibiotics are warding off infection, she is hydrated, and anti-inflammatory medication is keeping her… comfortable. I do not want to depend on painkillers until I know more about her state."

"You said she… roused," Garrus said quietly. "So, she's… she's woken up."

Doctor Michel nods. "Briefly. Only for seconds at a time, I'm afraid."

"So what the hell are we waiting for?" Vega asks. "Let's get this thing started, get these people moved!"

"Can Shepard _be_ moved?" Tali asks suddenly. The question startles Garrus; he hadn't even thought of it before, but it's a good one. His mind had already jumped ahead with James' — get Shepard in the medbay, let Doc Chakwas run as many scans as she can, and then… and then…

Then what?

_Rendezvous point. Right. Medical attention, rendezvous point, debriefing from hell._

_It's all worth it: Shepard's alive._

Doctor Michel looks at Shepard a moment, then up at him, and back at Tali. "Normally I would be hesitant to move any patient in her shape, but, as I said, my supplies are limited here. If there is an option to transfer her to a proper medical bay, moving her _is_ the best option. But it must be done _carefully._"

"I think we can do it, Scars," Vega tells him, sidling up to his other side. "We get Esteban to park the shuttle closer to this place's front doors, then me, Boomstick, and a couple of these other guys can move the commander, bed and all, into the shuttle. Might take a few trips, but we can get all these folks on the Normandy."

He knows they're looking at him; this is his op, after all. "Yeah," he says, finally, nodding once. "Yeah. Let's do it."

The sooner they get the hell out of here, the better.

#

The undertaking's successful, but it's not without complications. The first, of course, is the shuttle — _shuttle,_ singular. It's a lot of trips for one craft to make, and while Shepard goes on the first trip with Ash and Vega, every trip afterward the shuttle is loaded with as many people as it can comfortably carry. And through it all, Garrus stays behind, seeing the op to its end, making sure no one's left behind. He sends Tali back to the Normandy ahead of him, and the final trip carries Garrus, Commander Bailey, and Aethyta.

As the shuttle lifts off and pulls further and further away from the blackened hospital, Cortez glances over his shoulder at Garrus, hands never leaving the craft's controls. "You think there might be other survivors on other pieces of the Citadel?" he asks, and Cortez asks the question in a very general sort of way, inviting anyone to answer it.

It's Bailey who steps up to answer. "I think if we managed it, others could've."

Irritation flares to life again in Garrus' chest, at the Alliance who left them all for dead, who never _looked_ for survivors, who recovered Anderson and the goddamn Illusive Man, and didn't stop to wonder whether mystery air-pockets on the wreckage was a glitch or a fluke or something _more_. He's not going to leave this system until he knows there aren't any more life signs stranded in some basement somewhere, waiting and damn _hoping_ for a distress signal to be heard.

"Once we get back aboard the Normandy," he says, "let's see if we can figure out a way to pick out any more beacon signals. See what we can find."

He wonders a moment if the ship can spare the time and resources — the Normandy's as repaired as it's going to get for now, but it's nowhere near full-strength — but he decides _to hell with it._ Unless Adams and Joker can give damn good reasons why they can't look for survivors, then looking for survivors is exactly what they're going to do.

He doesn't want to have to tell Shepard otherwise when she wakes up.

#

Everybody knows Doctor Chakwas isn't a shrinking violet, but Garrus doesn't appreciate just what a ruthless, formidable force the woman is until she corners him in the mess hall, Tali and Ash flanking her.

"You haven't any more excuses, Garrus." The doctor's arms are folded tightly over her chest and she's glaring up at him with eyes like chips of green ice. Hell, that glare makes Serrice Ice Brandy seem warm in comparison. "Commander Shepard is not only aboard, she is safe, stable, and if I have anything to say about it, _recovering._ You assured me you would submit to surgery once our… operation at the Citadel was taken care of. It is."

He grimaces. "Doc…"

"You're walking worse on it every day, Garrus," Tali points out in that… _way_ she has, that rational and reasonable way that makes him — _anyone_ — feel like an ass for disagreeing with her. That _I know you're not a bosh'tet so don't act like one_ way. Damn. Never figured her for a traitor.

"Can the Normandy afford that kind of power draw? I'll be fine until we reach Terra—"

"I have been reassured the ship will be fine. And now," Chakwas interrupts, "you're being insufferably foolish. You have no reason to be up and around like you've been since we left the Sol system. Put the ship in Lieutenant Commander Williams' hands; she'll see us to Terra Nova." She waits a beat, still glaring. "Or is your grand plan to retire a war hero and have the lifelong limp to prove it?"

His knee flares in pain, and he barely remembers to stop himself from reaching down and rubbing the joint. "No…"

"Then let me fix your bloody leg or you'll be walking with a cane the rest of your bloody stubborn life."

Heaving a sigh, he almost— _almost_ manages another excuse to put off the procedure until they're safe at the rendezvous site. But then Ash has to put her two credits in, dark eyes steady and earnest.

"Skipper won't be happy to see you let yourself fall to crap while she was out of commission, Garrus. Don't figure you'd want to be the one to explain that to her when she wakes up."

Damn it. _Damn it._

Chakwas' smile is too damn satisfied by half. "Report to medbay once Lieutenant Commander Williams has taken the ship."

"Hey Garrus," Ash says airily, as if the thought's just occurred to her. "How 'bout you head on down to medbay now? I've got the ship."

"Gotta hand it to you, Chakwas," Garrus says, shaking his head and pushing to his feet, readjusting the crutch beneath his arm and making his slow way to the medbay. "You know your way around a bloodless coup, that's for damn sure."

"Decades of practice, young man. _Decades._"

#

Garrus wakes up on his back, propped against pillows and feeling no pain.

This isn't the first, it won't be the last, and it's actually not one of the worst times this has happened; his face is still in one piece, after all. He blinks once, twice at the ceiling, then at his leg. The leg that doesn't quite feel like it's actually _there,_ except for the fact that it _is._ He can see it. It's immobilized just about from hip to heel, but it's his leg. Still attached. Good.

Chakwas obviously knows her painkillers. Also good.

A few more blinks and then he looks to his right, finding a Tali-shaped blur of purple parked in a chair. Another blink sharpens his vision further and he sees that Tali's reading a datapad. Whatever she's reading, it's got her full attention, and so he peers past her to the bed on her other side. Shepard's bed. He squints, looking at Shepard's bed, then at Shepard. Her black hair is stark against the white pillow, like a streak of ink. She's lying on her side, watching him. He can see her blue eyes from here.

Shepard.

Blue eyes.

_Watching him_.

She's awake? She's _awake._ Garrus lifts his head, and attempting to sit up seems like a good idea to his drug-addled brain, right up until his _definitely_ attached leg moves, immobilizer and all, and a bright burst of pain zings through the anesthetic haze. Either the movement or his hissed curse alerts Tali, and she sets the datapad aside with a clatter as she twists around in the chair and then pushes to her feet.

"Garrus?" She gets him settled back against the pillows and steadies his leg. What's left is a deep, muffled sort of ache. "_Garrus, _what in Keelah's name are you trying to—"

"She's awake?" And, _hell_, his mouth is dry. "When did she—" but Tali cuts off his words, pressing a cold cup into his hand.

"Drink," she tells him, and damned if it doesn't sound like an order. "_Slowly._"

It's a damn lot to process, but having cold water wash away the dryness helps. He sinks back against the pillows, spent. It's a bad day when _sitting up_ kicks your ass like that.

"Woke up while you were out," Shepard tells him, her voice soft and husky with disuse. The bruises are fading to purple and yellow, the cuts are healing to dark red lines, and her hair is hanging lankly against the pillow — in short, she looks like hell, and she's _still_ the most beautiful sight he's seen in longer than he can remember. She's obviously exhausted, but when she sends him one of her crooked grins, he's damned _grateful _and relieved and there is no way in hell he's losing her, not again, not ever. The war's over. Shepard's alive, awake, and smiling at him. Everything that had felt broken to hell before, now feels as if it might slowly start piecing back together again.

"I told Shepard that a certain stubborn _bosh'tet_ wouldn't let Doctor Chakwas operate on his knee until he'd found her. I didn't name any names, of course."

"Of course," he says on a tired chuckle, taking another sip of the cold water.

"She didn't have to."

He shoots her a grin of his own, and _damn_ these beds are too far away. He wants to touch her hand, her cheek; the urge to gather Shepard close, press his forehead to hers and just _feel her breathe_ is overwhelming. He shrugs instead. It's all he _can_ do at the moment. "I guess the words 'stubborn bosh'tet' gave it away, huh?"

"Something like that." Her eyes slide to Tali, who's still facing him, and the expression there is enough to tell him she wishes they were alone, too. There are things they both want to say, and thought Tali is… well, _Tali_, there are still some things best said in private.

"Say, uh, Tali?" He clears his throat, but before he can say anything, she shakes her head.

"Let me guess. You want me to shove your beds closer together and then make myself scarce so you two can—"

"Hey," he says, mildly insulted at what Tali's implying as he waves at his immobilized limb, "I've got a busted leg, here."

"Talk," she finishes, smugly. It's strange — _really_ strange — to be making jokes under the circumstances. Especially when the circumstances involve Shepard looking so beat to hell. Feels like they should be more solemn about everything, but the tenor of the ship lately has strained "solemn" to damn near its breaking point. He'll take whatever this is, this… _tentative_ levity — tentative, but not strained, at least — over what they've had since London.

"You set yourself up, Vakarian," Shepard tells him quietly, her voice soft and husky and sounding too thin and nothing like herself, but he's okay with that. She's carefully shifting and adjusting herself against her pillows; her arm is still immobile — something wrong with her shoulder, Doctor Chakwas explained to him — and as she moves her expression grows taut, like that of someone in pain.

"And speaking of stubborn bosh'tets," Tali mutters, moving the chair she'd been sitting in and turning to Shepard's bed, releasing one set of clamps and engaging another, until the bed shifts and lowers, no longer docked and anchored.

"Our esteemed commander, huh?"

Shepard shakes her head, rolling her eyes at Tali. "I wasn't being—"

"Refusing painkillers so you'd be awake by the time Garrus came out of surgery? Stubborn."

Shepard grimaces. "Kinda got tired of sleeping all the time, Tali."

"Hmph. You're still stubborn."

Once the beds are as close as they'll go — close enough for him to reach out and clasp Shepard's hand, which he does — Tali re-anchors both beds, then regards them both a long moment. For someone whose face is obscured, that little tilt of her head is emotive as hell.

"I… should probably go tell Doctor Chakwas Garrus is awake," she says, her tone light as she turns and leaves the medical bay.

It occurs to him that of all the ways he imagined this moment, the reality of it is so far off the map there might as well not be a map anymore. He sure as hell didn't expect to _miss_ Shepard waking up — actually _waking up_ and not just forcing her eyes open for a few blurry moments at a time before sliding back to sleep again — and in none of his scenarios was he laid up like this. And he doesn't have the first damn idea what the hell he's going to _say._

"Shepard…" Not bad. Seems like a good start, far as these things go.

"The Mako got you good, huh?" she asks suddenly, her voice a little too tight, a little too high, a little too _wrong_ and even if she doesn't have turian vocal patterns, he can hear _so much_ in her voice, even without her fingers twitching tightly, desperately around his. "Tali told me Chakwas got her and Ash to corner you and—"

"Thena," he breaks in, and she sucks in a sudden, sharp breath. "Don't."

She closes her eyes and the breath she blows out sounds too much like a sob. "Sorry. I just— I don't…"

"Don't know what to say?"

Her broken laugh turns his heart over in his chest. "Yeah."

"Then let me start."

She inhales, shakily, then nods. "All right."

"Don't ever pull anything like that ever again. Not sure I could take it."

"Deal."

"I was pissed off, you know. That you took me out like that. Pissed off and scared to hell."

"I know." She's meeting his gaze steadily, and though she's obviously tired — for all the sleeping she's done, there are still shadows under her eyes — there's no regret or apology there. "I knew you'd be pissed, Garrus. It was my call to make, and I'm not sorry I made it. Doesn't mean I was happy about it, doesn't mean I didn't want you backing me up in there. And I know you'd've made the same call in my shoes." He scowls at that, but can't argue the point; she's right, damn her.

"I should've been there," he insists. "I should've _had your damn six_." He's not blaming her; he can't blame her — the Mako that sent him going ass over spurs, _that_ gets all of his blame. Or the Reaper that sent the Mako flying his way in the first place.

She breathes another broken laugh and shakes her head. "Don't go digging up 'should haves,' Garrus. Once you start, it's impossible to stop." Then she pulls his hand to her mouth, kissing the flat of his palm before pressing it against her cheek, and he realizes this isn't what he wants to say to her at all. His throat tightens as she nuzzles his palm and he thinks about the things he'd rather be saying.

_I love you. You scared me. Don't leave me behind again, damn it. Shepard and Vakarian means _Shepard and Vakarian._ It's over. You're here. You're mine— hell, I'm yours. We start fresh, we start new, right damn here._

"But never again," she whispers.

"What's that?"

Another kiss against his palm. "You're stuck with me, Vakarian. We're not doing that ever again."

His heart's pounding so hard he's sure she can hear it. Yes. This— _this_ is right. This is where they belong. A beginning, together. No Reapers, no Illusive Man, no galactic survival depending on their every move. Just them. Leave the galaxy-saving to the up-and-comers like Vega and Ash. "So… you're saying I should start looking into tropical islands."

"I do like a view."

"It'll be the best damn view you ever saw."

#

Shepard's Widow is gone. Wherever it is, it met the same fate as her Graal and her Paladin. But Garrus knows it's the Widow she really misses; her modded-to-perfection, cleaned-until-shining Black Widow V.

It's not easy to find one, but of all the feelers he's sent out through the Terra Nova installation, Cortez is the one who comes through first. He's also the one who helps Garrus set up the bottles in an empty field; he's a bit more mobile these days—thank spirits one of the turian ships had a set of crutches for him, and now if he hooks his spur on the damn things, it's his own fault—but setting up something of this scope is a little beyond him right now. He's not sure whether to mod the rifle for her or not; he knows how she likes it, but it's a very personal thing, modding someone else's gun. He also knows since getting the use of her right arm back, her dexterity in her dominant hand isn't what it used to be — he doesn't want to come off like he doesn't think she can mod her own gun, but he also knows how frustrated she gets when he motor skills aren't what they used to be — or where she thinks they ought to be.

In the end, he mods the gun. He wants her to be able to start shooting with it right away; if she wants to re-mod it, she will, later.

Cortez sends her out to meet him in the field. There's a gun case at his feet, and each and every one of the glass bottles he and Cortez set up (mostly Cortez) catches the light and splits it into arcs of color. It's a damn beautiful day for what he's got planned, too; the sky is cloudless and blue, and there's a breeze whipping through the grass that makes it seem to ripple. And Shepard's basking in it. She's wearing a plain white t-shirt and workout pants — straight from physical therapy with Chakwas, then. According to the doc's scans, Shepard's cybernetics are still functional. But even functioning cybernetic implants won't help atrophied muscles — especially cybernetics working at seventy percent instead of a hundred. Chakwas wonders if it's got something to do with Shepard being at ground-zero for that red energy wave that knocked the Normandy out of commission. The _why_ doesn't matter so much. Shepard has work to do, and Shepard, _being_ Shepard, is doing it.

Right now, she's beautiful. Her step is lighter than he ever remembers seeing it, and though her face is flushed with exertion — and probably frustration; he hates how slowly her right arm is recuperating — she's smiling at him.

_Garrus Vakarian, you are one lucky son of a bitch,_ he thinks, taking in the view.

"Steve said you were looking for me," she says once she's a few meters away.

"Eh. Close enough," he replies, and nudges the case with one foot. She arches a dark eyebrow first at the gift, then at him.

"Presents? What's the occasion?"

He grins and keeps his voice light. It's harder to shrug on crutches, but he lifts one shoulder. "Didn't realize I needed a reason to do something nice."

Her lips twist into a smirk as she narrows her eyes in false suspicion. "Okay, so then what do you _want?_'

That's a short list these days. "I want you to open your damn gift."

"Fair enough." And she drops to the ground, fingers going to the clasps on the case. But before she opens the case, she peers up at him through the fall of her hair, blue eyes glinting. "Let me guess. It's a puppy."

Garrus can't help but laugh at that. He can hardly remember a time when the two of them weren't mired down with worry and fear over not just their lives, but the state of the whole damn _galaxy._ If Shepard smiles a little more, jokes a little more, he's going to be the last one to complain. "Do you _want_ a puppy, Shepard?"

She considers this, and he realizes this may be the first time in her life she actually has the _freedom_ to make a choice like that — to have a pet, or not. He doesn't think the hamster counts, for all that she's damned attached to the rodent. "You know, Garrus. I think I do."

"All right, then you get a puppy. But not today."

With a snap, she opens the case and in a split second the smirk is gone, replaced only by shock.

"Oh, my God, Garrus…"

"Better than a puppy?" he asks, watching as she ghosts reverent fingers over the weapon.

"You modded it? You _modded_ it." A flare of panic runs through his chest right until he sees the brilliance of her smile. All right, so modding the gun _was_ a good call.

"You don't have to keep it that way. I just figured…" The way she's absently flexing her right hand tells him she knows exactly what he figured.

"I know. It's perfect. Thank you."

"Well. I don't know about _perfect._ You'll have to shoot it first."

Her smile's enough to tell him that was exactly the right thing to say as she assembles the rifle. He notices, and it pains him a little _to_ notice, that she fumbles some with the smaller parts, and though she doesn't do it in her usual record time, soon the gun is assembled, and she's standing, hefting its weight in her arms and bringing her eye to the scope.

"How is it?"

She shrugs one shoulder. "Fine. Better than fine. You? Kind of the best boyfriend ever right now."

"If you're worried about the recoil, I can—"

"Garrus." She looks up from the scope. "Quit worrying. It's perfect."

"Perfect, huh? So if you miss any of those bottles, it's your own damn fault, right?"

"I am _not_ missing any of those bottles." She tilts her head at them. "That the last of Vega's mezcal?"

"You know, I got the bottles from Cortez. So…"

"Could be Vega's mezcal."

"You should probably destroy the evidence," he says, sagely.

She lifts the gun and puts her eye to the scope. "My thoughts exactly." And with that, she breathes in, aims, exhales, and squeezes the trigger. The bottle explodes with a satisfying noise.

"So? How are the mods?"

"_Perfect._" She shoots him another smile and then goes back to the scope, pulling the next target into view.

"So. I finally got word from my dad and my sister." He pauses, huffs a laugh. "Or I should say they finally got word from _me._ I was the one MIA this time. They were the ones worried."

"That's good — I know you were worried." Again, she breathes in deeply and out again, squeezing the trigger on the exhale. Another bottle shatters into splinters of glass. "Where are they?"

"They were staying on a temporary installment on Horizon— far, _far_ away from Sanctuary," he adds when Shepard stiffens, her head jerking up to look at him, eyes sharp with alarm. "They're… _trying_ to book passage to Palaven," he explains. "They want to see… what's left." He knows what the reports are _saying_ is left, and it's not much. He also knows that's not going to stop his father.

"Can't really blame them for that," she says quietly. Her eye is to the scope, but despite this, Shepard seems far away just at that moment. "Lots of people wanting to get back to their homeworlds."

"Yeah, well. They can't get direct passage to Palaven. Everything stops in Terra Nova right now."

There's a tiny hesitation in Shepard's movements, but she recovers. "Oh. So you'll… get to see them." She lifts the gun again, inhales, aims, exhales, and shoots. Another bottle, gone. "That's good." There's that _note_ in her voice again, and it's followed by a blatant, graceless attempt at changing the subject. "Say, how's your sister's leg?"

"Healing, but she's pissed about being hurt to begin with. Hell, she's worse than I am at being out of commission." He looks down at his leg. "Haven't had a chance to trade injury stories yet. No idea how she got hurt, but I did get hit with a tank — figure I'll win that one?"

"Sibling one-upmanship, huh?" She smiles, but there's something… off about it, something distant, something still raw. "I understand, Garrus. You want to spend some time with your family." She shrugs again and lines up another shot. "It's okay. I want you to, too."

Her shoulders and her back are tense, and he knows — he _knows_ it's got nothing to do with the gun, or atrophied muscles, or anything like that. She's not looking at him — of course, if she's not looking at him, she can't see the way he narrows his eyes at her, seeing through every damn last one of her defenses. She's too tense by half, but she lines up another shot and blows the next bottle apart.

"Not sure you _do_ understand, Thena." He draws out her name slowly, arching a browplate at her as he watches her line up the shot again. Eye to the scope. _Inhale. Aim. Exhale… _ He clears his throat, hides his grin. "See, thing is, Dad's really looking forward to meeting you. We all figure it's high time you met the family."

The gun goes off, but the bottle doesn't explode. The huge tree far to their right, ten, maybe fifteen meters away, on the other hand, shakes like hell when the bullet slams unforgivingly into the trunk. A few leaves are shaken free, dropping in tiny, controlled spirals to the ground.

This time he doesn't bother trying to hide the grin. "Forgot to breathe, sweetheart."


End file.
